


The Installation Process

by flirtygaybrit, starship



Category: DC Extended Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Alien Technology, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autopsies, Body Horror, Genesis Chamber Shenanigans, Graphic Description of Corpses, Green Kryptonite, Knightmare - Freeform, Kryptonian Biology, M/M, Minor Clark Kent/Lois Lane, Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 09:40:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14517702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flirtygaybrit/pseuds/flirtygaybrit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/starship/pseuds/starship
Summary: After experiencing a startling revelation about the cause of Superman's death, Bruce Wayne's guilt inspires him to take Clark's fate into his own hands—but in the face of an alien invasion, Bruce quickly finds himself with a fast-growing team of meta-humans by his side and a ship full of Kryptonian tech at his disposal, and knows only that he must find a way to return Clark to the world in order to save it.





	The Installation Process

**Author's Note:**

> At last, the Superbat Reverse Bang is here! If you haven't seen  [ the art that inspired this story, ](https://stuvyx.tumblr.com/post/173526037614/superbat-reverse-bang-2018-title-the-installation) please go check out the incredible, awe-inspiring work that my fantastic partner stuvyx created for this bang, because this story sure wouldn't exist without it. I'll have more to say at the end of this fic—until then, enjoy!

In the northwest end of downtown Metropolis, the Kryptonian ship is quietly changing the world.

A craft this size shouldn’t idle so quietly, and compared to the late-night bustle of the city surrounding it, its silence inside and out makes its alien nature apparent. At the very least, the winding halls and cavernous rooms should be filled with the ambient sounds of background machinery running, or perhaps the bone-shaking rumble of a great engine powering the ship’s activity, but the only noises carrying through the ship’s hallways are the ones coming from the Genesis Chamber.

That’s where he is.

Despite the late hour, he’s not the only one in the room. A hovering Kryptonian robot has kept him company, whooshing gently through the air, and beneath the surface of the translucent fluid that fills the bottom of the chamber there are other robots, small aquatic service ‘bots whose own whirring is muted by the fluid barrier. If not for the soft, warm glow illuminating the fluid beneath them, they would hardly be visible at all. 

The robots are fascinating. They don’t look remotely menacing, and like the rest of the ship, contain no harsh lines or corners. With their long, flared bodies and tentacle-like appendages, the aquabots seem more like jellyfish or squid than extraterrestrial robots, sluicing lazily through the amniotic fluid as they go about their business. Occasionally, he can see them moving so close to the surface that they nearly break through, causing the amniotic fluid to ripple and lap gently against the walls.

He watches from the chamber’s open entrance, unmoving, a sentinel presiding over an unseen task. His hand rests palm-down on the activation terminal, but the ship isn’t waiting for his signal. In fact, the ship isn’t under his command at all. Its task has already been clearly defined for it, and the service robots that carry out the main duties in the ship have been working for approximately three straight days. His purpose isn’t to evaluate their work. He’s here to ensure that the task is carried out to completion, and to keep potential threats from interfering.

_There are four hours and twenty-six minutes remaining until full tissue maturation._

The ship announces this without speaking. It delivers the thought directly to his mind in an unfamiliar language that he, through some mechanism he cannot yet comprehend, can perceive and respond to. The ship has communicated with him this way for the duration of his trip, and while he’s learned plenty about the ship’s AI in this time, he still has plenty of questions that haven’t been answered. If he weren’t occupied with monitoring the hallways, he might like to spend more time exploring the ship and quizzing its AI.

He’d like to do that in the bridge. He’s had enough of the Genesis Chamber.

After a while, he removes his hand from the terminal and makes his way slowly down the destroyed bridge that had once stretched out into the centre of the chamber. Standing doesn’t tire him, but he lowers himself onto the ground and sits anyway, making sure not to let his feet dip into the fluid below.

Before its untimely destruction, the Genesis Chamber had been a grandiose, elegantly-designed structure. The pride of the vessel, no doubt. He’s spent enough time in here to study its design, and over the past few hours the ship has helpfully shared its history, projecting images of the chamber in its prime directly into his head so that he can see it as it had been: resplendent, his mind supplies. Truly sublime.

Despite the years of disuse and the recent destruction, the Genesis Chamber still boasts a number of admirable features. The walls are tall and curved like the rest of the ship, seemingly made of the same smooth material that makes up the floor, the hallways, and almost everything else. Elegant carvings span the full height of the chamber’s walls, obscured in places where great chunks of the wall have been carved out. He knows that the chamber had sustained considerable damage when the ship had crashed and found its final resting place in downtown Metropolis. but much of the interior had already been destroyed prior to that point—not from the crash, but from a blast of Kryptonian heat vision. 

Once a government branch had taken up residence in Metropolis and restricted access to the site, they had moved into this chamber and begun their work; scaffolding and ladders had been erected to build up a ledge near the doorway, and he can see mangled remnants of wiring and the makeshift portable laboratory that had been installed and subsequently destroyed when the Kryptonian Deformity had burst through the ship’s ceiling. That particular event had done even more damage to the chamber than the crash. The ship’s walls are covered in remnants of organic tissue—the withered corpses of plant-like stalks that had once swayed gently in the sterile chamber and had been used to bring the dead Kryptonian back to life. The ship had mentioned those stalks earlier in the evening, explaining that they had once been maintained by the same aquabots hard at work below him. Even with full knowledge of what’s happening beneath the surface of the amniotic fluid, the idea of a chamber full of artificial wombs and embryos in stasis still seems almost impossible to fathom.

An image slips into his mind, another visual aid from the ship. He sees a man standing in the bottom of the chamber, knee-deep in fluid as dark and thick as clotted blood—the ship’s own amniotic fluid mixed with residual matter from a tattered chrysalis, organic tissue left to rot. He knows that this is Luthor, minutes before being apprehended and forcibly removed from the ship. Then the scene changes, and he sees a cluster of scientists with hazmat suits and collection containers gathering samples of the contaminated fluid, oblivious to the aquabots around them who are attempting to initiate filtration and decontamination protocols. 

It’s a bittersweet scene. Even with the ship’s power at a critically low level and the Genesis Chamber’s core function in a now-permanent state of failure, the active ‘bots are still committed to maintaining the integrity of the chamber.

It's sort of funny, too. Just another thing he and the robots have in common.

“How long until I can get out of here?”

“There are four hours and nineteen minutes remaining until full tissue maturation,” the ship reports dutifully. Its speech is audible this time, the result of his question being voiced aloud. He's somewhat fond of the ship’s artificial voice. It’s smooth and vaguely feminine, and it reminds him of the old sci-fi movies he used to watch with his father. Now, those are relics of a bygone era, a time when talking spaceships were only a dream of the future and Siri was a technological breakthrough.

Four hours and nineteen minutes. He can certainly find a way to entertain himself until then. “Let me see the genetic structure again.”

At his command, hundreds of thousands of small metallic particles pour into the air from all directions, flowing through the air like a river of molten silver before solidifying into the distinct shape of a rotating double helix. He doesn’t have a correct name for the tech that the ship hasn’t directly identified for him, but he understands that this particular substance is referred to as liquid geo, and that many of the ship’s ever-changing structures are composed of it. Although its particles are neither truly liquid nor geometric in shape, it’s a substance that he would like to examine more closely when he has the time.

“Is this the base structure? The template?”

“This represents the genetic code expressed at the time of request,” the ship says smoothly.

He considers the DNA structure before him. Its shape doesn’t mean anything to him now, but it wouldn’t take him long to learn. Less than four hours. “Show me the dynamic structure. Slow it down.”

The liquid geo flows again, forming a moving display of shifting nucleotides that enter from one end and exit from the other, creating a structure that neither shrinks nor grows in length. He knows that the genetic alterations he’s witnessing on the display are happening far more quickly than the liquid geo is illustrating. They’re occurring so swiftly that a real-time display might simply manifest as a blur of liquid geo moving too quickly for the human eye to track.

Thoughtfully, he casts another glance around the chamber. The amniotic fluid is nearly still, the airborne security robot has temporarily whooshed out of sight, and there are no sounds in the hallway to indicate that he’s no longer alone on the ship. The aquabots beneath the surface will complete their task with or without his supervision. All he has is time to kill.

“Display the genetic code at regular speed,” he says. “I think I can keep up.”

The Kryptonite Electric

Each step Bruce takes away from the Batmobile saps his strength, leaving his legs fatigued, his footfalls heavy. He’s made this trip hundreds of times, following the linear path up the staircase that connects the open central garage to the laboratory on the second floor, and many nights he’s found himself so weary that he’s regretted not placing another elevator nearby.

But tonight is different. He feels numb to the usual bone-deep exhaustion that plagues him after a night on the town, and his fatigue is little more than background noise, an obstacle to be overcome. He has a purpose now, and his commitment to fulfilling that purpose is overriding his body’s desire to shut down until it can begin to recover.

But his body is not the only one he must carry.

Alfred is in the process of hastily clearing the surface of a workbench when Bruce reaches the top of the staircase. He says something that Bruce doesn’t quite catch over the heavy thud of his own boots on the cement, and Bruce is only dimly aware of something metal clattering to the floor as Alfred rushes to make space for him. 

As exhausted and sore as he is, it doesn’t take any effort to heave the body of the Superman onto the table. The cape spills over the side and pools on the floor, forming a vibrant puddle of red on the cement.

Purpose fulfilled.

In his peripheral vision, Bruce can see a mirror image of Superman on the screen monitoring his optics feed. The view of the body is occluded by the cowl as Bruce removes it, and when he glances at the screen again, the feed is offline.

“I left the spear in the car,” Bruce tells Alfred. His throat is dry, yet to his surprise his voice is steady. He’d expected it to be as hoarse and guttural as it had been with the cowl on. It's been an extremely long night. “If you could put it… somewhere. I have something I need to do.”

He glances at Alfred, who seems almost reluctant to look at the new decor, but hasn’t yet voiced his concerns about what something Bruce is referring to. 

In truth, Bruce doesn’t know what that something is, either. He’d only had time to make a few hasty promises before he’d left the port: one to protect Superman’s body from the people who would soon seek to acquire it, and one to return it. He’d nearly promised protection for Superman’s mother, but he’d quickly recalled the squadron of GCPD vehicles that had surrounded her outside the warehouse and decided that she would be safer at the precinct.

If he’d had more time, he would have tried to take them all to safety. But helicopters had quickly moved in, circling the scene like vultures with floodlights, and the wailing GCPD vehicles had been on their way. He’d only had time to collect the spear and the body.

And his name.

As Bruce moves around the table, tossing his gauntlets next to his abandoned cowl, he notes that Alfred still hasn’t moved. He’s watching Bruce with an uncharacteristic wariness, as though this is the first corpse Bruce has returned with. 

“You’re not… leaving him there, are you?”

Without glancing at the body, Bruce lifts a shoulder and drops his belt on the floor.

“He’s not going anywhere.”

●

For the rest of the evening the lab serves as a makeshift morgue.

Bruce abandons the cave completely for a few hours to retrieve the wreckage of his plane from the port and rendezvous with the police commissioner for a debriefing. Normally he would be happy to hole himself up in the cave and be alone with his thoughts, but tonight has been a spectacular disaster, and as a result Bruce has found himself saddled with a number of loose ends to tie up before he can worry about the Kryptonian corpse taking up residence in his private laboratory. 

He keeps in contact with Alfred, whose discomfort with the situation comes across clearly in clipped sentences; before Bruce had left, the spear had been removed from the Batmobile, thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, and finally placed against the wall in the armoury. At Bruce’s request, Alfred had carefully removed the small scraps of flesh still clinging to it, swabbed the dried remnants of blood, and ensured that they were preserved and labeled for later inspection. He discovers this only when he returns to the armoury with the remnants of his mechanical exosuit that he’d salvaged from the plane, but he has no use for pieces of that monster.

It feels as if everything he’s brought home tonight has been broken beyond repair. Everything but the spear.

Despite the late hour, Bruce tries to keep his mind clear and focused, to categorize his tasks in order of importance. He has a few pressing concerns, the most high-ranking of which involve Luthor, the Kryptonian monster, and the reporter who had granted him permission to retreat with Superman’s body, but in the back of his mind a thought continues to nag at him—the corpse growing cold on his table. 

Logically, he understands that Superman’s body is the least time-sensitive on his task list. Luthor’s notes on General Zod, the one who had helped topple a portion of Metropolis over a year ago, described his cells as static; his body had shown no physical signs of decomposition in the months following his death, and had seemed to simply ignore the other stages altogether. In fact, the only known cause of cell death appears to be exposure to kryptonite. In theory, a dead Kryptonian could remain that way for eternity.

This time yesterday, Bruce had thought that a Kryptonian corpse would have made a beautiful and timeless display in his cave.

Now, he isn’t sure what he thinks.

•

When he finally returns to the cave, he finds Alfred in the armoury, arranging the mangled exosuit on its display stand. The helmet is sitting on the staircase nearby, half-destroyed, unusable. Bruce won’t be repairing that suit. He’s got another purpose for it.

“When you’re done with that, I’m going to need the last of the kryptonite.”

Alfred straightens up, holding a thick metal gauntlet in his hand and frowning at the equipment in Bruce’s own. “Dare I ask what you’re planning to do with all of that?” 

He follows Bruce into the laboratory, watching as Bruce steps between the tables and places a metal dish filled with hot water and a half-dozen cloths next to Superman’s head. 

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m cleaning him.” Bruce reaches over the table to adjust the light, noting that Alfred now has his arms crossed over his chest. 

“What are you planning to do with the _kryptonite_. You’re not seriously thinking of using it on him again?”

“He’s dead, Alfred. It’s not like it can kill him.”

“That's the point, Master Wayne, he’s _already dead_. Do you not think he’s entitled to some small measure of respect?”

“I’m not going to disfigure him,” Bruce says. He dips the first cloth in the water, carefully wrings the excess, and starts to wipe the dirt from Superman’s face. The face of Clark Kent. “I’m going to prepare him for burial and send him back to his mother.”

“You’re going to prepare him for burial,” Alfred repeats incredulously. “With kryptonite.”

Bruce brushes the cloth slowly over Clark’s cheeks, his forehead, his jaw. His skin doesn’t seem to hold dirt or water the way human skin does, but flakes of dried mud melt beneath the cloth as Bruce continues to wash him, moving further down to the base of his neck where it meets the fabric of his suit.

“Did you know the ancient Egyptians used autopsies to prepare their dead for the afterlife?” 

Of course Alfred knows. It’s common knowledge. He doesn’t need Bruce to lecture him on some of the most well-known burial practices in ancient history. He doesn’t need Bruce to lecture him on burial, period.

Bruce continues anyway. “The embalmers used obsidian blades for making incisions. It was so valuable and expensive that most of them had to import it, but it was important to prepare the body for immortality.”

He checks again to make sure that Alfred is still listening. “The earliest autopsies were performed by cavemen. Hunters who needed to open up their kill and make sure the meat wasn’t spoiled. 

“So the hunters became butchers.”

He discards his used cloth and begins to wipe delicately around the edges of Clark’s suit with a new one. The fabric is unlike anything Bruce has ever seen, resembling neither metal nor any synthetic fabric he knows of. Bruce has watched Superman rush into dozens of dangerous situations that would have burned and shredded any normal clothing, even kevlar and carbon fibre, yet his suit is almost pristine, and the scorched puncture wound in his chest is the only proof that suggests the suit isn’t completely invulnerable.

Taking care not to linger too long at the site of impact, Bruce quietly wipes down the rest of Clark’s upper chest, shoulders, and arms. He takes special care with Clark’s hands, turning each one carefully to clean it of any dirt or blood. To his surprise, Clark’s skin is approximately room-temperature, no longer warm with life, but not as cold as he’d expect from a corpse.

Alfred is still watching him when he straightens up and reaches for another cloth. He has a pensive look, which means he’s not actively disapproving of Bruce’s current task, but Bruce knows Alfred well enough that he’s already bracing himself for whatever opinion Alfred is about to offer.

“Say it.”

“This isn’t your kill,” Alfred says simply. While technically the truth, it’s nearly a lie; he knows that Bruce was only inches from taking Clark’s life himself, and he knows how powerless Bruce was to keep it from happening when it did. For all the good he’d done in the end, it may as well have been Bruce’s kill.

“Did you find the kryptonite?”

Alfred has obviously made no attempt to go searching, but Bruce can do that when he’s finished with his current task. Most of the kryptonite he’d borrowed from Luthor had been used in his experiments, in the gas, and in the spear, but he still has a number small fragments that hadn’t found a home in his weapons—leftover pieces that hadn’t been pulverised or carved into a sharp edge, too small and misshapen to be of any real use. He’d kept them just in case, though he couldn’t possibly have predicted which circumstances would require their use again.

“...I think you can find it on your own,” Alfred says after a long stretch of silence, his repugnance so strong that Bruce can feel it hanging in the air around them. “I’ll leave you to… ensure that nothing has spoiled.”

“Thank you,” Bruce says. He continues washing Clark’s suit to the sound of retreating footsteps until silence falls over the cave once more.

•

It surprises Bruce how little blood he finds on the suit. It’s not as if the Kryptonian monster’s spear had only gone through one side of Clark’s body and left a single hole in his chest for drainage, so it doesn’t seem likely that all of Clark’s blood is simply pooling in his body. Now that Bruce is focused and level-headed, he can clearly remember that there hadn’t been any traces of blood around the wound immediately after Clark’s death, either. In fact, he doesn’t even remember seeing blood well from the wound he’d made on Clark’s face. There had only been the deep red of muscle tissue, which at the time had answered Bruce’s ill-conceived question, though he hadn’t had the presence of mind to realize it at the time.

Maybe the Kryptonian monster’s final energy discharge had fully cauterized the wound, or maybe the kryptonite had simply vaporized it. Maybe the Superman had never bled after all.

The bloodless water certainly suggests so.

•

Assembling his tools takes a bit more time. Donning a particle respirator and protective goggles, Bruce chooses an inch-long shard of kryptonite and begins to craft a small blade; it takes time to grind a bevel into the edge and more time to sand it to perfection, and once he’s satisfied with the first, he makes a half-dozen more. Each blade is attached to a stainless steel handle, and when Bruce is finished the final product resembles a sturdy, finely-crafted surgical ten-blade.

If only the ancient Egyptians had thought to use kryptonite rather than obsidian.

He cleans the scalpels and arranges them on a metal tray, then begins to clean the area around the table on which Clark’s body rests. The laboratory smells like disinfectant by the time he’s finished, and although he’s not concerned about contracting a disease or contaminating the body in return, he washes his hands and dons clean gloves and a mask out of respect. If he’s going to do this, he’s going to do it properly.

It seems illogical to attempt to use scissors to cut through the Kryptonian suit, so Bruce opts to use the scalpel immediately. His ingenuity rewards him: the first cut is a clean one, and as Bruce slides a finger beneath the collar he manages to draw the fabric away from Clark’s body, keeping his line neat while he opens the suit from collar to groin. He takes great care to remove the suit from Clark’s arms and legs, and although it takes some effort to pull the rest of the cape from beneath Clark’s body, Bruce is finally left with a nearly perfect piece of Kryptonian attire that, quite frankly, baffles him; like a cast, or perhaps like a shell, it seems to have molded itself perfectly to the landscape of Clark’s body, and the pseudo-metallic material maintains its shape even once Bruce has set it aside. He doesn’t spend much time inspecting it—that will come later, when he can take his time to examine the burnt circumference of the puncture hole—but a brief inspection reveals no latches for the cape, nor any seams for the boots, which don’t appear to be separate from the suit at all.

It’s as fascinating to him as any alien technology, but in the end, it’s simply a humanoid shell in the precise shape of the humanoid corpse on his table, and he has no more time to spare until his next task has been completed.

With the suit draped over his chair for later inspection, Bruce readjusts Clark’s limbs, arranging him in proper anatomical position on the table. From a workbench near his computer he retrieves a camera and, holding it high overhead, begins to photograph Clark from head to toe.

There is no colour to Clark’s skin. This isn’t the first time Bruce has noticed—he’d noted it when he’d first placed Clark on the table, but the suit had been vibrant enough that Bruce simply hadn’t noticed how colourless he is. When he rolls Clark over to take a few photos of the posterior side of his body, he notes that there are no signs of alvor, livor, or rigor mortis, which is perhaps more baffling than the paleness which has overtaken him. 

Clark has been lying on the table for hours, and by now his blood should have followed gravity’s pull and settled in pools. His limbs should be stiff, yet it’s disturbingly easy for Bruce to move him into position. His temperature should be dropping, but even that doesn't seem to be occurring. If Bruce hadn’t witnessed Clark die firsthand, he might have misinterpreted this as a comatose state. Clark could just as easily be asleep as dead. But that would be easy to accept, and what Bruce has to accept is that Clark is now a Kryptonian decedent, just as the monster that killed him had been.

As he returns Clark to supine, he drapes a crisp, sterile sheet over the body and finds himself hoping for Clark to be dead and not simply asleep. No living person should have to experience what Bruce is preparing to do. Not even Superman.

He folds the sheet at Clark’s waist and moves to the side of the table. He’s fully prepared, with all of his tools within reach and an empty document on his computer for notes, but he finds himself hesitating once the scalpel is back in his hand. Bruce has watched Clark through countless lenses, inspecting him from every possible angle through every available video and photograph, and it’s only now occurring to him that he’s never seen such a peaceful expression on Clark’s face. 

This is the last time that Clark will ever look this way again, and it feels unfair that Bruce should be the only person in the world to be given the honour of seeing him this way, the honour of examining the last Kryptonian. Lex Luthor is living proof that the information held within Kryptonians has the potential to change the world, maybe even destroy it. Bruce can’t allow that to happen again.

•

When the kryptonite touches Clark’s skin, his body yields to the blade’s edge in a way that Bruce has never seen; the skin splits as easily as if his body were welcoming the kryptonite, and it allows Bruce to draw a neat, bloodless line running the length of Clark’s right clavicle. He repeats the process on the left side, drawing an incision that meets the other at Clark’s sternum; Clark’s body opens so readily under Bruce’s steady hand that he wonders how it can possibly be the same flesh that has flattened bullets, ignored the lick of fire, withstood the crushing weight of ice, weathered ballistic missiles.

In another version of this moment, Bruce would have taken great joy in seeing Clark’s skin break. He might even have done this with Clark still alive. The thought makes his fingers tighten around the scalpel, and Bruce takes a moment to steel himself before he begins to cut again.

He opens Clark from sternum to pubis, taking great care not to disturb the ragged edge of the puncture wound, then curls his fingers under the superficial layer of soft tissues beneath his skin. The kryptonite had been his first test, and this will be the second; with one hand pinning the opposite side of Clark’s torso in place, he tries to peel skin away from muscle, but even in death Clark's strength bests his own.

As Bruce notes the resilience of Clark’s skin and fascia, he's unsure whether such a test can even be deemed a failure. He picks up his scalpel once more and, holding it at an angle, begins to slice away at the fascia anchoring dermis, adipose tissue, and fascia to muscle. Like Clark’s skin, it cuts so easily that Bruce may as well be slicing warm butter, and as the layers separate Clark creates a vibrant splash of colour on the plain steel tabletop: the dull red of his muscle like the cape and crest, the yellow of adipose tissue like the gold in his crest.

By the time the flesh and muscle of Clark’s chest wall hse been fully reflected, Bruce moves around the table to get a better look at the hole in his chest. With the lighting directly overhead, Bruce can see the reflective metal surface of the table through the space in his mediastinum where Clark’s heart and left lung should be. The Kryptonian creature’s arm-spike appears to have shattered this portion of Clark’s rib cage on impact, shredding intercostal muscle and embedding shards of bone in the blackened tissue surrounding the hole. 

Cautious, Bruce reaches inside with a gloved hand. It seems odd that he should be able to fit his hand in anyone’s chest, but as he palpates the walls of the wound and explores the charred periphery of the wound on the surface, he discovers fragments of bone jutting from the tissue, seared into place. The obviously burnt tissue within the wound has hardened—cauterized, he suspects, recalling the way the creature had erupted in a storm of electrical energy.

He remembers hearing Clark scream. In the moment, he must have heard the sound of the creature impaling him, the sound of his ribs snapping. The blast had forced Bruce to take cover, and he hadn’t clearly witnessed the very last seconds of Clark’s life, but he’s certain that it must have been unimaginably agonizing.

It’s for the better that he didn’t see what happened immediately after Clark speared the monster.

Using a scalpel and forceps, Bruce manages to remove a charred shred of skin and a number of bone fragments that had become lodged in the wound. He deposits his samples in small glass vials and he picks up his blade once more, turning his focus to removing the tissue from the bottom of Clark’s ribcage. There isn’t enough kryptonite to create a proper saw and he can’t afford dull the few blades that he has before his examination is complete, so he works instead on cutting through the muscle of his abdomen; he can access Clark’s lungs once the diaphragm has been peeled away and expose the abdominopelvic cavity, take samples of fluid and lung tissue to check for kryptonite residue, and get a first-hand look at the inside of a Kryptonian. How many people can say the same?

Cutting through the abdominal muscle is simple and uneventful, but as Bruce’s fingers brush against the outer peritoneal layer he’s surprised to find that it’s warmer than the rest of Clark’s body, its temperature so noticeably different that he can feel it easily through his gloves.

He makes a mental note. Kryptonian skin tough enough to act as insulation? Review later. 

He slices into the tissue and finds himself almost immediately engulfed in a spray of black smoke; it hisses through the hole in the peritoneum like a pinhole in a balloon, bringing with it the acrid smell of burnt meat, but as Bruce coughs and turns away he realizes that he hasn’t just released a buildup of gas from a corpse. It's something different, and as he peels back the peritoneal tissue and peers inside Clark’s abdominal cavity, he immediately identifies the source of the smoke: the digestive organs that should take up the entirety of the cavity are shriveled and blackened, steaming gently in the cool air of the laboratory.

He’s been incinerated.

•

A wave of nausea washes over Bruce. He turns from the table and takes a moment to let it subside, his mind racing to make sense of his discovery. He’ll need to log all of this when he’s finished; an audio recording would have been easier, but he certainly isn’t going to forget this. Horrific as it is, this must be the reason Clark’s body hasn’t yet cooled.

Tentatively, he returns to the table and leans closer to examine the contents of Clark’s body. The structures inside have quickly stopped steaming and are nearly unrecognizable as viscera, human or otherwise, yet a quick examination with his fingers reveals that they’re now cool to the touch. The large, fragile-looking lump of black that should have been Clark’s liver leaves a soot-like residue on Bruce’s gloves when he touches it, and the surface of Clark’s stomach and intestines flake off as well, disintegrating into ash between his fingers. 

Cautious, Bruce reaches into the cavity and slides his fingers beneath what he suspects was once Clark’s stomach; it hardly takes any effort to crack the small opening connecting the superior segment to his esophagus, but despite Bruce’s gentleness, the organ quickly crumbles into dust, slipping through his fingers and into the empty space below.

•

Bruce had planned to learn Clark from the inside out.

Heat-generating eyes, lungs capable of withstanding air pressure that would crush a normal human, the ability to defy gravity—he’d expected that Clark’s greatest secrets would be hidden in his body, and now it seems that Bruce’s questions will never be answered. 

There are more samples to take than just charred tissue, of course; Bruce returns to his autopsy with new expectations, extracting samples of undamaged cartilage from his trachea, a slice of external intercostal, and, in an unbelievable stroke of luck, a small, somewhat charred, but seemingly healthy chunk of tissue from the inside of Clark’s liver. There are no viable arteries or veins to draw blood from within his abdominopelvic cavity, and Bruce quickly discovers that Clark’s lungs and heart—the portion not destroyed by the creature’s spike—have met the same fate as the rest of him.

A brief glance inside Clark’s mouth reveals that whatever had burnt him had found its way up his esophagus too. It seems strange that Clark’s tongue and eyes haven’t been completely burned up in the same fashion, but Bruce simply notes their presence and carries on. He’s already come this far. It would be a disservice to abandon his task now. 

It takes several minutes to slowly saw a hole in Clark’s cranium. Bone is much more difficult to cut through than skin and muscle, but the kryptonite’s alien radiation seems to be strong enough to do the trick. Although the slit that Bruce manages to carve between Clark’s parietal bones is barely large enough to fit the kryptonite blade through, the same sickly smoke sprays out from within as he withdraws the scalpel, telling Bruce all he needs to know about the pressurized contents of Clark’s skull.

It’s become painfully obvious now that there’s no chance of Clark recovering from his injuries this time. If the chest wound had been his largest obstacle, Bruce has no doubt that he could have recovered from it, but the state of Clark’s organs suggests that any chance he may have had would have been taken away the moment his body was immolated from the inside out. Now Clark is a cadaver on his table, his body disfigured and splayed open like some precious lab experiment, and Bruce—

Bruce doesn’t deserve to see Clark this way. He doesn’t deserve to know the truth of Clark’s death, that a hole through his chest hadn’t been enough to kill him, but that it had required an inferno within him to take the Superman down. But Bruce has to know. To keep it from the people it would devastate the most, this must become a closely-guarded secret. It had very nearly been his own fault, after all, and if it weren’t Bruce conducting this post-mortem examination, it would be some nameless government agent. Clark would be butchered and distributed to private laboratories for prosecting, rendering him another nameless jumble of limbs and parts, and the truth of Superman’s death would be broadcasted to the world.

Bruce doesn’t deserve this truth, but he’s the only one who can keep it safe—keep Clark safe, in death, with only his legacy left to protect.

•

It’s nearly dawn by the time Bruce steps into the shower, eager to wash the scent of burnt meat from his skin. His clothing rests on the floor in a forgotten pile that will likely remain there until after he’s had the chance to sleep. Most of the lights are off, and Bruce doesn’t bother turning them on; this quiet, calm atmosphere is one Bruce typically revels in, yet the background noise and the warmth of the shower’s spray brings him little comfort.

His new secret troubles him. He won't be able to keep his discovery from Alfred, who will expect Bruce to have produced an array of samples for research and preservation, but he can’t imagine delivering Clark’s body to Kansas and apologizing for not returning _all_ of Clark to Kansas. It’s his family that Bruce must protect: his mother, Martha, and Lois Lane. If anyone else knows his identity, Bruce will keep it from them, too.

Martha should know that her son died a hero. She’s probably heard the story by now. If she’s lucky, any existing footage will never come to light, and she’ll live the rest of her life with the entire world speculating about Clark’s death, mourning him, celebrating him. She deserves to know that her son saved the world by submitting himself to something nobody else in the world could have survived, but she doesn’t deserve to know that it reduced her son to a hollow, burnt shell.

Bruce leans against the tile and exhales. Behind his eyelids he can see the Kryptonian monster erupting in an orange-yellow-green storm of energy, its fury whipping up a cloud of debris that had surrounded the two Kryptonians as they screamed and roared and died together. Clark’s eyes, unfocused and unseeing, a thin wisp of smoke curling from the deep, dark hole in his chest. It had been so easy to miss. 

Bruce spends more than an hour underneath the spray of water, scrubbing himself clean of kryptonite and ash residue. In his mind, the smoke lingers, and the scent of burnt flesh follows him to bed and haunts his dreams.

**II**

Following a hearse through the empty roads and withered fields of Smallville, Kansas makes Bruce feel as if Death itself has become his guide.

He’d made the trip out to accompany Clark and pay his respects, but it had felt too strange to ride in the hearse, so Bruce has settled for an inconspicuous rental. The coffin is similarly plain: undecorated pine, a modest contribution in the wake of a major tragedy.

While the funeral director is in the process of having Clark’s coffin removed from the hearse, Bruce removes a briefcase from the car and approaches the porch, where the front door swings open to reveal Martha; dressed for the wake in a black shirt and with a golden cross at her throat, she doesn’t seem to recognize Bruce, but something in her expression changes as she looks past him. 

Bruce is familiar with the way people shut down in the face of loss, and he knows that no matter how present and composed she may seem now, she’ll spend the coming days wandering that place where parents who lose their children go.

“I’m so sorry,” she says finally, her voice admirably steady despite the glassiness of her eyes. She wipes hastily at her face with a sleeve and extends a hand to Bruce. “I’m Martha. And you must be...”

“Bruce.” He holds her hand in his for a brief moment. “I’m sorry to meet you under these circumstances, but I’m here on behalf of our mutual friend.” 

Martha appears to consider that, nodding and tightening her grip as though certain that the caped man who once saved her might feel it too. One of the first things he’d done after Clark’s death was instruct Lois to assure Martha that his body would be safely returned to her within the week. Martha doesn’t need to know anything about the Batman beyond the promises he’s kept, and she certainly doesn’t need to know the details of the Bat’s relationship with Superman.

She finally releases his hand, and Bruce lifts the briefcase, holding it level for her inspection.

“He thought you should have this.”

Martha takes a long, hard look at the unmarked surface of the case. There’s curiosity written in the lines of her face when she glances up at him, but as she opens the lid and reveals its contents, her expression hardens, becoming something just short of a scowl as she closes the lid and latches it shut.

“Tell him he can keep it. It has no place here.” There’s something in her tone that suggests she’s not especially fond of the suit, which is unexpected. “I know it’s all that he had from his home, and it meant so much to him, but sometimes I think… maybe if he’d never put it on…”

Bruce places the briefcase on the porch with a small, sympathetic smile. He understands what it’s like to want to blame the suit.

“I’ll pass on the message,” he assures Martha. “And for the record, I think your son would agree that he’s already home.”

•

Bruce doesn’t stay for the wake, nor does he join the funeral procession when they begin the somber march to the cemetery. He stands back near the gates during the service, keeping a comfortable distance between himself and the private display of grief on the hill.

He’s glad that he’d thought to bring a jacket; a cold breeze rustles the shriveled corn stalks surrounding the cemetery and sends dead leaves skating across the ground. Occasionally, the breeze carries the vicar’s voice through the padding of the small crowd, but Bruce doesn’t try to hang onto every word. He feels too much like an intruder already, and the words are meant to comfort Clark’s friends and family, not a stranger. It isn’t his right to share their grief.

As the attendees begin to disperse, the final guest finds Bruce on the outskirts of the cemetery. 

He hardly has to look sideways to know that Diana has come to see Clark off, to pay her respects just like he had. Having been present for Clark’s final moments, Diana has as much right to be here as Bruce does.

They stand together in silence as Lois Lane retrieves a handful of dirt from the nearby mound, but Bruce can watch no more than that.

As he turns to leave, he considers the vicar’s words; he pulls his coat tighter around him and makes his way along the path back to the farm, sparing a thought for Clark, the man not of this earth now being returned to it.

●

In the days following the funeral, Bruce retreats to his subterranean laboratory and does his best to ignore the news.

The local stations have been the least tolerable thus far, but the entire world has opened up to mourn Superman and share stories of his heroic deeds. Bruce isn’t interested in those stories; instead, he monitors global news channels, radio stations, newspapers, and as much of the internet as he can access for speculation surrounding Clark’s death. Very few people had been present for it, but with Luthor’s arrest in the headlines and the details of his plot exposed, it doesn’t take long for theories about the ship and the creature to begin rolling in.

Bruce is interested in those theories. He’s among the handful of people who know precisely what killed Clark, but the question that’s plagued him since the autopsy is: _how_ did it kill him?

He’s sitting at a table when he hears the sound of the elevator settling into place. It’s unnecessary for Bruce to look away from his current project to confirm the source of the sound. He can easily identify Alfred by the pace of his footsteps, and he can easily predict the look of incredulity on Alfred’s face based on the contents of his experiment alone.

“I know what you’re going to say, and yes, I know what I’m doing.” Bruce removes a petri dish filled with black ash from his microscope, labels the cover with a Sharpie, and sets the dish aside before reaching for another.

“Bruce, I understand that your work is extremely important, but I sincerely hope those samples don’t belong to anybody who has just been laid to rest.”

Bruce doesn’t look up from his microscope until Alfred has stepped around him and placed his tray on a nearby table. To his surprise, Alfred has come bearing gifts: a plate of fresh sandwiches which, despite subjecting Bruce to a series of less-than-subtle suggestions about reentering the world of the living over the past several weeks, does not remove Alfred's status as a terrible enabler.

“Thank you. I thought it would be okay to take the specimens out of storage, since he’s not going to want them back.”

“You couldn’t have waited before returning to your experiments?”

“Waited for what? A day, a week, a year… it isn’t going to make a difference.” Bruce rolls away from the table long enough to grab one of the sandwiches, then takes his place at his workstation once more. “Clark’s dead. The least I can do is find out why.”

Alfred glances down at the tools Bruce has spread out over the table. There’s a small electrode, an unused kryptonite scalpel lying nearby, and a standard optical microscope; on the opposite side of the table, far away from the kryptonite, Bruce has arranged a number of petri dishes containing thin cross sections of the unburnt liver samples from Clark’s body, and a few other liver samples that don’t belong to Clark, several of which are no longer recognizable as tissue. Instead, they’ve been reduced to ash, just like the rest of Clark’s viscera. 

“I assume you’re going to explain this?”

“You assume right.” Bruce indicates the dish sitting on the stage and rolls his chair aside to let Alfred examine the sample more closely. “Clark was able to recover from a nuke strike within minutes. If he was strong enough to come back from an injury like that, he should have been able to recover, even with a Kryptonian-inflicted wound. But I suspected it wasn’t just the hole in his chest that killed him. I needed to see if I was right.”

While Alfred takes a look at the tissue specimen through the microscope, Bruce takes the metal tip of the electrode and presses it against the tissue. 

Seconds pass. Nothing happens.

“I checked the voltage on this. Tested it on fresh beef liver. The current fried it in seconds, but these samples from Clark’s body? It’s like I’m not even touching them. Not a twitch. No visible change in cellular integrity or activity. Nothing. It’s like the current doesn’t even affect it.”

He doesn’t mention that he’d compared this to the results that Luthor had gathered from testing General Zod’s corpse. Bruce knows now that Luthor had intended to reveal certain details about Kryptonian weaknesses to him, but the leech had collected all of Luthor’s research and data. He supposes he should be thankful for that much. Almost all of his knowledge of Kryptonian biology is from Luthor’s own private research, but Luthor hadn’t thought to conduct this particular experiment.

“I was thinking about the electrical energy that monster gave off. Even if a normal Kryptonian were capable of producing that much concentrated energy, it should still just act like normal electricity. Kryptonian cells don’t react to electricity. So I thought… maybe something compromised his cellular integrity.”

With the active electrode still pressed against the tissue, Bruce picks up the kryptonite scalpel and begins to move the kryptonite end closer to the microscope. 

The first change becomes apparent when the kryptonite is about six inches away. The faintest curl of smoke is beginning to come from the spot where the electrode is pressed against the slice of liver, and as the blade approaches the petri dish the tissue ignites, blackening at the site of the electrode before the flame spreads across the surface of the petri dish, quickly consuming the small cross-section of tissue and turning it to ash.

Alfred lifts his head away from the microscope. Bruce removes the dish and places the electrode on the table.

“It was the kryptonite. Whatever radiation it gives off that weakens Kryptonian cells... it acts as some sort of electrical conduction system on organic tissue. When that thing discharged its electrical energy, it had a direct path through him, and it just...” Bruce slumps back in his chair and gestures vaguely, then runs his hand through his hair, gazing at the kryptonite on the table until it blurs out of focus. “With all the kryptonite I pumped into him, he didn’t stand a chance.”

Normally, Bruce would look forward to hearing Alfred’s response to a finding of this magnitude. Alfred is normally a valuable asset in cases like these, capable of offering a perspective and providing insight that may be enough to settle a conflict, but this is a different case. No matter what Alfred has to say, Bruce has just provided him with more proof than he can refute.

“You didn’t kill Superman, you know. The creature that Luthor raised did that.”

“If I hadn’t gassed him—”

“Master Wayne, the man was struck by a full nuclear missile _after_ your assault, and fought that creature by your side without any sign of weakness.”

“We don’t know that,” Bruce argues. “He might’ve been stronger without exposure to the kryptonite. It might’ve been in his lungs, slowing him down, weakening him. We have no way of knowing for sure. And even if the gas didn’t affect him at the end, the amount of kryptonite on the end of that spear probably didn’t do him any fucking favours.”

Alfred purses his lips together and glances back down at the singed petri dishes on the table while Bruce begins to gather his equipment. He places a lid over each specimen to prevent contamination and ensures that the kryptonite is on the opposite end of the table, ready to go back into storage. He doesn’t need the kryptonite anymore, and he doesn’t need to destroy anything else with it to prove his point.

“That spear didn’t put that hole through his heart,” Alfred insists. He steps back and allows Bruce to stand, but he doesn’t seem as though he’s interested in offering help. Bruce isn’t offended. Alfred didn’t have a hand in making this mess. “The spear was the only thing capable of killing that creature and you know it.”

“I know Clark would still be alive without it,” Bruce replies, matter-of-factl. He leaves his samples on the table, picks up the sandwich he’d left on the table, and turns his gaze beyond the lab’s glass windows to the kryptonite spear on the ground below.

•

In the evening, he mounts Clark’s suit above the one that currently resides in the armoury, making no attempt to fasten together the edges that he’d cut open. Now encased in glass, the suit is positioned so that Bruce can see the front of it when he enters the cave from the lake entrance.

The cape hangs lifelessly from its shoulders, but the suit still maintains its structure: a Superman-shaped shell, cracked open and hollow, another trophy to add to Bruce’s collection.

After some deliberation, he suspends the kryptonite spear next to the suit. When the machinery turns off and the lights dim for the night, its soft green glow can be seen from every corner of the cave.

The Invasion Imminent

The following months prove to be a challenge for Bruce in almost every way imaginable.

Much of the world has grown to revere Clark in the time since his existence was revealed, but in death he’s practically canonized. People from all corners of the world unite to fill the streets with tributes and murals; photographs and videos and countless anecdotes of Clark’s deeds surface, with celebrities, talk show hosts, and social media paying homage to the alien who had selflessly given his life in defense of the planet. Even the port in Gotham becomes a makeshift memorial in its own right, a street shrine filled with flowers and candles and small gifts arranged in a display that rivals the official monument in Heroes Park for weeks after.

Clark is dead, but somehow it feels like he’s never been more alive.

Although the memorials are the most popular sites for remembrance, Clark is also remembered less fondly by some; his self-sacrifice is twisted into atonement, and speculation swirls around words like ‘justice’, ‘vigilante’, ‘Batman’. There are conspiracy theorists who don’t care for the story presented in the newspapers, magazines that try to rewrite the truth, and media outlets that report different theories about Clark’s disappearance altogether, even going so far as to suggest that his death has been faked.

But through all of it, no one mourns Clark Kent. Bruce manages to obtain a copy of the obituary from the Daily Planet and keeps an ear to the ground, but while the Superman tributes arrive in waves, the Clark stories are all but nonexistent. Bruce had hardly known Clark as _Clark_ , yet as time passes it becomes easier to remember Clark as the man he’d been, rather than the threat Bruce had wanted him to be. Superman’s stories _are_ Clark’s stories, and that fact becomes more apparent to Bruce with each new anecdote about a stranger helping those in need.

•

He tries to keep in contact with Diana. Conversation is sporadic, but Bruce’s emails are always returned with a few short words. Their single shared experience hasn’t exactly warmed her to the idea of friendship, it seems, until eventually Bruce manages to procure a gift: the original copy of the photograph he’d found in Luthor’s files, a relic of Diana’s past that he sends with a note to Paris.

The change is slow, but soon Diana begins to share information with Bruce, too. The story of Luthor’s plot to shatter Superman’s image, his secretive exchange with the government, and his illegal activities within the ship are all public knowledge, but in addition Diana shares with Bruce the rumours that she hears from across the ocean of other dealings that Luthor had taken part in. Bruce has already heard much of it, but he likes being able to communicate with someone he doesn't need to conceal his identity from.

On the other hand, Bruce knows very little about Diana. He knows that she’s—older, to put it politely, and is apparently as strong and fast as a Kryptonian, but Bruce forces himself to bide his time until she’s willing to share her story unprompted. 

It doesn’t stop him from researching, of course.

In the following summer, a minor issue in Midway City pings Bruce’s radar, and it seems only natural to fill Diana in on the details. When the idea of a millennia-old witch hardly seems to surprise her, Bruce is more curious than ever, but he bites his tongue and asks for her help instead; his promise to Amanda Waller is a difficult one to fulfill, but not an unachievable one, and with Diana aiding from abroad he manages to shut down rumours surrounding the incident and comes away from it with something far more interesting than an old photograph.

In the safety of his cave, he drafts a new email.

_I have another gift for you._

●

“ _Draft Framework for Enhancement of Global Security Via Coalition of Meta-Human Assets._ ”

Diana leans against the wall next to Bruce’s computer station and flips through the document, her eyebrows drawn inward as she scans the text. Bruce has memorized the entirety of the document by now; much of the information contained within is not new to him, but he isn’t sure that she’s as familiar with the super-human population as Bruce is. “So these _meta-human assets_ … obviously somebody else knows about them.”

“I have it on good authority that very few people have been given access to the contents of that book, but the government has been theorizing about the existence of meta-humans for years. That’s nothing new. That document is from a group called A.R.G.U.S., the Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-humans. They’re a research agency affiliated with the US government. Luckily, they aren’t a threat, and they have no connection to Lex Luthor.”

Diana closes the document and gazes down at the logo on the cover with a pensive look. She should find some relief in knowing that she was never on Waller’s radar, but Waller and her team have identified far more meta-humans than Luthor, and that fact is just as concerning for people like them.

While she’s occupied with the file, Bruce takes the opportunity to pull up a number of files on his computer, filling the monitors with his own research and footage that Luthor had unwittingly shared with him. “Most of the people in that file are in prison. Some are dead. Some are still out there, trying to keep their identities and their abilities a secret, and they’re the ones we’re looking for. Specifically the few that Luthor found, the ones I sent you. They’re the ones we need to find.”

Diana places the file on the console and gazes at the monitors with her arms folded. There’s a folder with her name on it that Bruce hasn’t bothered to hide from view, and she gazes at it for a moment before glancing down at Bruce. “At the funeral you said you wanted to find the others, but you never said why. Is it the agency? Have they found something new?”

“A.R.G.U.S.? No, this is all they have. All the meta-human data they’ve compiled from across the world is right here.” Bruce taps a finger on the document’s cover for emphasis. 

“So they say.”

Diana’s skepticism is obvious, but Bruce understands. He wasn’t surprised to discover the existence of such a document, and although Waller had assured him that the document now in his possession is the only material copy of the file, he won’t be surprised when Waller inevitably reveals that he doesn’t have the only copy. He’d personally encrypted the digital files himself, but people like Waller are hard to trust. “It took some convincing to get, but the person who made this document entrusted it to me for a reason. These people, these meta-humans, they aren’t in danger because I know about them, but they will be in danger if someone else finds out… hence the secrecy.”

“Do other governments have agencies like this?”

It’s a good question, but it’s not one Bruce can easily answer. The truth is that they probably do. When Superman came into the world, he didn’t just capture the attention of the United States; the Kryptonian invasion sparked global conversation, and Bruce is almost certain that every country in the world has been scrambling to compile data and research on their own superhuman populations.

“I don’t know for sure. But I do know that our government has an asset that the rest don’t.” With a click of his mouse, a familiar clip from S.T.A.R. Labs begins to play on the monitor closest to Diana, muted for Bruce to speak over. “You’ve seen this video already. Silas Stone isn’t a meta-human, and I think it’s safe to assume that U.S. Gov. Object 619-82 is not man-made. But the subject...” Bruce freezes the frame and points at the unnamed man suspended in the background. 

Over the span of five minutes, the limbless torso of the subject has grown a rudimentary spine, a leg, and two arms. The subject’s face is frozen mid-scream, his open mouth just visible through the white-blue storm of energy that seems to be—and very likely is, if Bruce’s suspicions are correct—synthesizing a completely new body. “Whoever this was… they were human, but now they’re something else.”

Diana leans in close, watching the gruesome loop with a faint frown. This is new footage for her, an extended version of the clip that Bruce had sent her originally. He doesn’t know how familiar Diana is with alien technology, but he’s almost certain that she’s drawing the same conclusions that he has.

“This is technology beyond our limits. Science that surpasses biomaterials, bioprinting, beyond any biomechanical or biomedical engineering we’re capable of, even in the modern era. This is—it’s xenotransplantation. It’s biomimicry. Reconstruction without a blueprint to follow. Whatever that box is, it’s intelligent, and it’s capable of using an organic base to create fully functional—”

“—Biomechatronic body parts,” Diana finishes. She meets Bruce’s gaze. “He’s a cyborg.”

The corner of Bruce’s mouth curls up. It hadn’t taken him long to reach that conclusion either. Luthor had even aptly named the files _CY_. “Far as I’m concerned, that meets every definition of meta-human. So I took the liberty of searching for him, and I have reason to believe that the man in that video is”—he clicks again and pulls up a photograph of a young man—“Victor Stone, Silas’s own son. Legally, he’s listed as deceased. But the problem is... he’s not in A.R.G.U.S.’s file, and it’s got every single meta-human on their radar in it.” 

“Which means this is a hoax, or something in the video attracted Luthor’s attention.” Diana straightens up and steps around Bruce for a better look at the monitor that Bruce has just opened a separate set of files on: scans of Lex Luthor’s own handwritten notes, pages filled with scribbles covering mathematics, planetary physics, power sources, and gods. 

There are diagrams, too, hand-drawn illustrations featuring the same series of three squares. Bruce tries to read Diana’s expression as she surveys the notes, searching for some flicker of recognition, but he suspects she may be as adept at concealing her knowledge as he is.

“These shapes, these… squares. Cubes. You’ve seen them before, haven’t you? That object in the video it’s the same shape from Luthor’s notes.”

Diana doesn’t respond, obviously reluctant to reveal what information she has. Looks like it’s time for a trump card.

Bruce clears his throat, and one of the subfiles from Diana’s folder appears on the monitor in front of her.

“A top-secret British spy group retrieved an object just like it from Belgium after World War I. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you who they were.” 

Diana turns to him with an arched brow and a look that Bruce can’t fully parse, as if assessing how insufferably smug he plans to be about his discovery. He doesn’t intend to brag. They both have cards that must be played closely. There’s nothing personal about keeping secrets.

“I wasn’t part of the expedition.”

“I know. So let me tell you what happened: they returned it to the American government, where it’s been lying dormant until”—another frame from the S.T.A.R. Labs video appears on screen, the alien cube with its warped walls seeping light—”it was activated in that video by Silas Stone.”

Bruce pushes his chair away from the monitor and folds his arms over his chest. Diana doesn’t look angry about Bruce’s homework, but her expression suggests she has something to say about the cube; Bruce is certain that she knows something about it, and while he hates to stress uneasy alliances by pressing for information, it’s obvious that this is an issue that they can’t afford to approach blindly. “When Luthor had access to the Kryptonian ship, he wasn’t just experimenting on aliens. I believe he contacted someone, and I think that someone has something to do with these things. His notes mention interplanetary travel, renewable energy sources, and his calculations are… like nothing I’ve ever seen. Whatever these things are, they’re powerful.”

Diana glances at the screen again, then pulls Bruce’s rolling stool closer and takes a seat next to him. “You think whatever… _whoever_ Luthor communicated with… may be interested in these cubes.”

“That’s the idea.”

“Do you know who Luthor could have contacted? How do you know he was capable of communicating with anyone?”

“I know he used the ship,” Bruce says firmly. “Think about it. The ship was supposedly lying dormant on our planet for thousands of years, and we didn’t learn about Kryptonians until it was activated. It’s probably the reason those rogue Kryptonians knew about this planet in the first place. I don’t know who he would’ve contacted, but I have reason to believe that someone out there knows what happened on our planet.” 

The image of Luthor in his prison cell is clear in Bruce’s mind; punching the smug look off of his face would have been a treasured memory. 

Diana nods slowly. “When we were at his funeral, you said you wanted to find the others. That they would have to stand together and fight. You think the person he contacted is a threat to the world.”

Bruce lifts a shoulder and leans back in his chair with a gusty sigh. “I think whoever he called answered, and I think they know what he did. If whoever he spoke to was looking for this cube… I think Victor Stone, wherever he is, may be our key to understanding why. And I think it can’t hurt to have someone like him on our side.”

“But you don’t know that Victor Stone is alive,” Diana points out. As much as Bruce hates to admit it, she isn’t wrong. He’s managed to compile footage from local news stations and year-old GCU varsity football highlight reels, but most of Bruce’s intel on Victor Stone is limited to an obituary and a couple of sentences from old social media posts. “Why not question Silas Stone? If he activated the box in the first place, why not speak with him directly?”

“Because Victor Stone could still be out there somewhere. If there’s even a fraction of a chance that he’s alive after what happened in that lab, it means there’s a chance he might be able to help us get the information we need about the cubes.”

Diana hums softly and turns her gaze back to the screen.

“If he’s still out there, he may need to be convinced to share what he knows.”

“I can be persuasive.” That earns a quiet, amused sound. Bruce would hesitate to call Diana a friend, but he can’t help feeling as if significant ground has been gained here tonight. 

“And if the others don’t want to stand with us?”

Us. 

Bruce smiles faintly. He may not have a plan or a team just yet, but having one superpowered ally on his side is a good place to start. “If they don’t want to stand with us, at least we can say that we tried.”

•

Bruce sits on Diana’s use of the term ‘box’, running it over in his mind like a river sanding a stone.

Of course she knows more than she’s letting on. She’s obviously something more than human, but that’s all that Bruce knows: Diana is tough, incredibly fast, and seemingly ageless. He remembers her statement, her sword, her shield. “I’ve killed things from other worlds before,” she’d said, which had been neither boast nor threat. The fact that she hasn’t registered on anyone’s radar but Luthor’s is remarkable, and speaks volumes about her ability to fit into the world so easily.

To Bruce’s surprise, she offers her side of the story before he even gets the chance to ask. Perhaps it’s due in part to gratitude, or because it seems inevitable that Bruce’s current trajectory will lead him to uncover some long-buried truth eventually, but while Bruce is musing about the potential uses for the box, she turns to him and suggests, “Let’s take a walk.” 

For the next while, she tells Bruce a fantastic series of stories about the entities known as New Gods, the alien world of Apokolips, and even the foul winged humanoids called parademons that Bruce has been hunting in the streets of Gotham. She reveals to Bruce the existence of the ancient races of Amazons, Atlanteans, and the Old Gods, and recounts the events of an ancient war that had ultimately ended in the temporary defeat of an Apokolyptian invader known as Steppenwolf and the acquisition of a powerful alien technology: the mother boxes.

It’s everything Bruce expected to hear, and everything he’d hoped would never happen.

“So you think Steppenwolf is the guy we’re looking for, and he’ll probably come after them again,” Bruce summarizes. He’s been walking along a lakeside path while Diana has imparted her wisdom, the fresh air and sunlight providing a much-needed respite from the cave’s dreary interior. “Yours and the one in Atlantis.”

“I know he will,” Diana says grimly. “This is what Steppenwolf does, and even without the mother boxes he will be stronger even than Luthor’s monster. He will stop at nothing until he gets them back.”

Bruce grimaces, narrowing his eyes against the sun as he glances at Diana. “So that’s why you’re agreeing to help me. We don’t have armies at the ready who are capable of fighting back.”

“Yes,” Diana says, “and no. The worlds of man, Themyscira, and Atlantis have never been more divided, Bruce. It’s impossible to say whether they will ever join together again. But this quest of yours, this plan to bring people together…”

“Yeah, well, now I can finally include ‘Earth’s last line of defense’ in my sales pitch.” 

“Is that really how you see it?” 

Bruce scrubs a hand over his face, remembering the figure reaching for him in his cave. 'You have to find us,' he’d said. “No.” 

Diana stops suddenly, turning to Bruce with her arms crossed over her chest. “You’re not building an army. You’re trying to bring hope back into a world that has forgotten what it feels like. These people, the meta-humans, they may not know there are others like them. What you’re doing is incredibly noble, Bruce. I know you’re not doing it because you found them in a government file. And I know Superman would have been honoured to join you.”

Maybe his quest is noble, but Bruce highly doubts that Superman would have wanted anything to do with it.

“I wish I could’ve given him the chance,” he says quietly, ignoring the curious tilt of Diana’s head. He hasn’t told her that he’d met Clark once in the past, and that Clark had been very vocal about his distaste for the Bat. Superman would likely never have considered him an ally, even if he had managed to survive their encounter with the monster. “Not that it would have mattered.”

“Well, I think he would have joined you,” Diana says. “If he could see what you’ve done for him and his family…”

Perhaps Clark would have appreciated the meager donation that had covered the cost of his funeral, but that small kindness would never be enough to outweigh the horror Clark would feel if he knew how Bruce had disfigured him before returning him home. If Clark could see what Bruce has done, rallying behind him would be one of the last things Clark would do.

“Noble or not, I’ll need to find a way to convince the others to join,” Bruce says finally, after spending a moment picturing Clark hovering over the lake’s surface with fire in his eyes. “If they’re smart enough to fly under the radar, they may not want to raise their hands when someone comes asking about powers. It’s not like I can put out a job ad. I’ll need to approach them individually, cater to their best interests. For Victor, I was thinking of using the ship.”

“The ship?”

“The Kryptonian ship in Metropolis. S.T.A.R. Labs took it over from the government after Luthor, and Victor’s father has access to everything inside it. It might be a good way to get more information about about Steppenwolf and the mother boxes that we don’t know, and if we can convince Victor to help, he might be able to get us inside.”

“He may have access to the mother box, too,” Diana says thoughtfully, following Bruce’s lead as he turns and begins to walk slowly back in the direction of his house. “Getting that box to safety should be a priority. And if the mother box created Victor’s body, it’s possible that Steppenwolf will seek him out as well.”

Bruce tries not to grimace as he looks out over the lake once more. “Then we should probably get to him first.”

**II**

Silas Stone has lived at the same Metropolis street address for years, which makes him an easy mark to follow and observe; the apartment building on Centennial Street is unremarkable in almost every way, but Bruce is just cautious enough to spend a night staked out on a nearby rooftop, monitoring activity within the building while he waits for something—or someone—to present themselves.

“I can’t imagine he would hesitate to open the door to somebody so obviously friendly,” says Alfred, whose wryness has been bleeding through the comm link since the moment Bruce left the cave. “I still think a more subtle approach would be appropriate. It might make him feel more at ease… _if_ he’s even in there.”

“He’s in there,” Bruce says confidently. He isn’t referring to Silas, who has already returned from the S.T.A.R. Labs facility for the night—it’s the unidentified voice that Bruce has detected inside the building alongside Silas Stone’s voice that he’s interested in. “And he doesn’t need subtlety. He grew up in Metropolis. He’ll know who I am.”

“That’s precisely what I mean. Do you think he’ll feel safe knowing that a man notorious for battering criminals and jailing monsters is lurking about?”

“He has nothing to be afraid of,” Bruce says lightly.

Eventually, the lights in the apartment finally go dim, signalling the day’s end for whoever’s inside. The windows are shuttered and block out most of the apartment’s interior. It’s not unusual enough to raise suspicion, since privacy in a downtown centre like Metropolis can be hard to come by, but Bruce suspects that there’s a good reason for the extra privacy. 

He continues to wait long after the lights have gone out, and just as he’s nearing the end of his patience, he’s rewarded for it: behind the window blinds is a faint flash of movement, there and gone again before Bruce can identify its source. 

“See? Nothing to be afraid of,” Bruce murmurs.

The darkness beyond the window blinds remains unmoving as Alfred huffs a laugh in his ear. “I have a feeling you’ll have to do more convincing than that.”

•

The next night, Bruce perches on the same rooftop on the opposite side of Centennial Street, his steadfast gaze fixed on the same dark, shuttered windows for another glimpse of whatever had moved within the night before. Silas Stone is still at work, and the apartment has been still in the time that Bruce has spent watching over it; the only light inside is the soft red glow of a lamp behind the blinds, but Bruce has heard no footsteps or voices coming from within.

“Have you considered that he may have mistaken you for a threat?”

“I don’t think he’s afraid of me,” Bruce says firmly. When the silence stretches out and Alfred doesn’t make any attempt to convince him otherwise, he considers it an argument won. “But if he’s been paying attention, he might be curious enough to make himself…”

Bruce trails off mid-sentence, recognizing almost immediately that something has gone wrong with his cowl. Without warning, the voice modulator seems to have failed.

He clears his throat and lowers his voice, just cautious enough to make an effort to disguise it. “Alfred?”

Before he can detect a response, Bruce is startled to find the cowl’s retracted lenses descending and locking into place, obscuring his view with the HUD; instead of an infrared overlay or the usual tech display, he sees a clear image of himself crouched on the roof—but as he shifts and turns his head, the image of himself does the same.

He turns his head back to the window and watches himself from Silas Stone’s apartment.

“You sound familiar,” says the mechanical growl of the Bat’s voice modulator. It wouldn’t be quite as alarming to hear if Bruce had said the words himself, but it’s neither his voice nor Alfred’s; Before Bruce’s eyes, the feed in his HUD cuts to a series of other images: televised public speeches of Bruce’s, years-old CNN interviews, local news stories, online articles. “Bruce Wayne?”

The videos cut back to the current feed of Bruce on the roof. He tries to focus on the window behind his lenses, but it’s difficult to see clearly through the display, and it’s even more difficult to read the tone of someone speaking with his own voice. “Can I ask who I’m speaking with?”

“Nobody the Batman should be surveying from across the street,” says the voice in his modulator.

On the HUD, Bruce sees himself smile. Maybe Alfred was right about making himself less intimidating. His smile is extremely unsettling.

“I’d like to introduce myself properly, if that’s okay with you.”

The image on his HUD zooms in, creating an enhanced picture of Bruce on the rooftop that moves rapidly over the area before focusing on him. It looks like Victor’s searching for something—weapons, maybe, or signs of trouble.

“I’m not armed,” Bruce says quietly, “and I’m not dangerous. I’d just like to meet you face-to-face.”

The feed goes still while Victor considers his proposal.

“I don’t think I can do that. And if you’re looking for Silas Stone, you won’t find him.”

“I’m not here for your father,” Bruce says. Before Victor can withdraw his presence and make himself disappear again, he adds quickly: “You’re not in trouble, Victor. Neither of you are. I know what happened to you… but I’d like to hear your story, if you’re willing to tell me.”

The modulator goes silent once more. This time, the video feed shuts off completely, restoring Bruce’s view of the Stone apartment as the lenses retract back into the cowl.

“I guess you can keep a secret too,” Victor says. “Meet me on the roof.”

•

“If you’re not looking for trouble, why come to Metropolis?”

Bruce is standing with his back to the door on the roof of the apartment building, but he’d heard the door swing open, and he doesn’t blame Victor for trying to tread lightly. 

Victor’s voice is perfectly human; Bruce recalls that most of his upper body had been intact after the accident, but as Bruce finally turns to face him he’s surprised by how tall Victor actually is; he stands nearly as tall as Bruce himself and is just as broad-shouldered, his arms and chest bulky beneath the grey sweatsuit that he’s donned for this brief public appearance. He’s the perfect build for a star quarterback, and there’s nothing obviously inhuman about his appearance—aside from the metallic jointed feet, the soft red glow in his chest and face, and the metal half-mask that appears to have taken over the left side of his face. 

Apparently it wasn’t a lamp in the window after all.

“You knocked out my communications,” Bruce says coolly. His modulator is still inactive, and his attempts to contact Alfred have been ineffective. “That’s an impressive skill, you know. Not many people are capable of that.”

Victor watches him warily, making no effort to acknowledge Bruce’s praise. It’s obvious that Victor wants to keep a safe distance between them; his hands are stuffed in the pockets of his hoodie, and he hasn’t tried to take a step forward since setting foot on the roof. “Guess you can tell I’m not like many people. Answer my question.”

“I came here because I need your help.”

“ _My_ help?” Victor eyes Bruce, his tone carefully neutral. “Why would Batman come all this way to ask for help? I thought you worked alone.”

“Consider this an exception,” Bruce says. He takes a step forward and watches the glowing focal point of the robotic eye on the left side of Victor’s face flit down, drawn to the movement. “I’m looking for someone with your skill set.”

The human side of Victor’s face becomes stony, his expression changing to one of obvious distrust. “You don’t know me.”

Bruce considers listing all of the things he knows about Victor—which, beyond his accident and cybernetic origins, is a fairly small list—but he’s not looking to scare Victor away. He needs to bring Victor over to his side. “You’re right, I don’t know you. But I know what happened to you. I know what your father did for you.”

“You mean what he did _to_ me.”

“I mean what he did for you,” Bruce repeats. “I know he works with highly classified Kryptonian tech at S.T.A.R. Labs. The box he used on you, it’s not Kryptonian, but it changed you, didn’t it?” 

He takes another step forward, and this time Victor stiffens, stepping back against the door. “Victor, I understand that what you went through is something nobody alive has ever experienced. I’m not here to threaten you or your father, but the longer that box is in his possession, the more danger you’ll both be in.”

Victor stares at him. “What do you know about the change engine?”

Change engine. That must be what they’ve been calling it in the lab. Bruce isn’t sure what discoveries or breakthroughs they’ve made with it, but he suspects that anything they may have found will only have been a fraction of its power.

“I know it’s not from this world. I have reason to believe that someone is looking for it. Someone who knows how to unlock its power. Someone who could destroy the world with it.”

Victor scoffs quietly, but he isn’t fleeing just yet. He looks contemplative, head tilted as he stares at Bruce. “You came here because you thought I could get it for you?”

“I came here because I think you have a connection to it. I think you can help me keep it safe. Keep the world safe.” 

Victor simply regards him with the same apprehensive stare.

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You don’t,” Bruce says. “But I can tell you that Lex Luthor used the Kryptonian ship to communicate with something from far away. It’s not public record, but if you want proof, the ship will have it.”

He holds up one arm, showing off a small screen attached to the inside of his gauntlet. The screen doesn’t activate immediately, seemingly controlled by the same mechanism that Victor has employed to deactivate his tech, which makes for a rather anticlimactic reveal. “If you don’t mind...”

The small blue light on top of Victor’s head flares a bright yellow-orange, and almost instantaneously the screen on Bruce’s arm comes to life, displaying the image of the three squares burnt into the side of a building from his last encounter with a parademon. “That change engine your father has been researching is an alien technology called a mother box. There are three of them here on earth, and if the person looking for them finds them and brings them together, it could mean the end of the world.”

Victor’s shoulders slump a little, and he looks down at the ground for several seconds before glancing up at Bruce again. “I thought you said you wanted to listen to my story.”

“I do,” Bruce says gently. “I’m very interested in your story. And if you help me with this, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to keep you and your father safe.”

“I still don’t know that I can trust you,” Victor says.

“If I thought you were a threat, you would know by now,” Bruce replies. He flashes Victor a small smile and tilts his head. “You already know you can trust me with your secret, Victor. I’ll trust you with mine, but I need to know that you’ll be willing to help me keep other people safe.”

“Can I have some time to think about it?”

Bruce nods, then unholsters his grapple gun and steps toward the edge of the roof. “Give it some thought. I’m going to the ship in two days to get answers. I’d like it if you joined me.”

“I might be able to help you get in,” Victor says slowly. 

“I hope you can,” Bruce says truthfully. He fires his grapple without aiming, feels the line go taut through his gun and hand. “Sometimes working alone isn’t good enough.”

●

“May I ask what you’re planning to do with those?” Alfred asks, nodding his head in the direction of a nearby workbench.

On the table’s surface, sitting among a tangle of wires and spare smoke bombs, Bruce has assembled a small stack of petri dishes (empty) and a handful of glass vials (not empty). Bruce is currently in the process of tucking one of the vials safely away in a compartment in his belt, and while he doesn’t give any indication, he’s immensely pleased by the fact that he can perfectly fit several inside once everything else has been removed.

“I’m just taking a few samples with me,” he replies breezily. His belt now contains vials of ash, bone, liver, and cartilage. He’d considered kryptonite, but it’s doubtful that he’ll need it once he’s on the ship. “Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“I can’t imagine what you would need to prepare for that might require samples of that nature,” Alfred replies. His tone suggests that he has almost certainly imagined it. “It wouldn’t happen to involve that birthing chamber that Luthor appropriated, would it?”

The official news release following Clark’s death hadn’t been specific about the ship’s role in Luthor’s plot, since it would have spelled disaster for the suits who had provided him with all of the tools he needed to bring his creation to life. S.T.A.R. Labs had been thoroughly investigated after the incident, so unwittingly shared incident reports became a valuable source of information. Even still, much of the interior of the ship is still a mystery to Bruce, but he does know that it contains an amniotic chamber which had been used to mutate the body of General Zod and grow the monster from his corpse. 

The possibility of accessing that chamber has crossed Bruce’s mind, but he doesn’t want to create any more monsters if he can avoid it. Following in Luthor’s footsteps and experimenting with human and Kryptonian DNA would be unspeakably dangerous. Bruce needs information, not an opportunity to raise Frankenstein’s monster.

Bruce flips the compartment shut and reaches for his cowl.

“Probably not.”

•

Gaining entry to the containment centre in Heroes Park is a disappointingly simple task.

The base is guarded by the U.S. Air Force, and security clearance is reportedly difficult to obtain. Bruce simply bypasses security altogether, beginning his three-a.m. rendezvous by dropping out of the sky. To his surprise, Victor is already inside the building, waiting for him beyond the door to the airlock. He’s not wearing his sweatsuit, either, and now Bruce can see the alien nature of his entire body, glittering and multifaceted as though hewn from some strange gem; his neck is connected to his body with thick wires instead of muscle and tendons, and a red glow emanates from deep within his chest, seeping from between the armoured pectoral plates and reflecting off the glass door between them.

It seems like there’s very little left of the Victor Stone that once was, but Bruce is looking forward to getting to know the Victor Stone standing before him.

“I froze the security feeds,” Victor says through the glass. “The ship is empty, but I’ll keep an eye on the cameras.”

Victor’s ability to communicate remotely with technology may be a greater advantage than anticipated, and if his power extends far beyond that which he’s already to revealed to Bruce, he may prove himself to be an immensely valuable ally in the coming weeks.

Bruce nods, and together they step into the complex. The vast interior of the hangar is illuminated by halogen flood lamps and quadpod-mounted lights. The Kryptonian ship looms in the centre, a behemoth surrounded by scaffolding. A path lined with lights guides them to the open doorway at the base, and after sharing a brief look, Victor and Bruce take their first step aboard.

The hallways of the ship are lined with workstations and scientific instruments emblazoned with S.T.A.R. Labs logos, and all of it stands out starkly against the soft edges of the Kryptonian architecture. There are no corners or straight lines, no linear paths to walk; certain sections of the hallways are open, revealing sloped areas with recessed lights and smooth structures that jut out from the walls. Even the floor beneath them has a rounded edge, and upon closer inspection Bruce realizes that the floor is in fact carved with intricate whorls.

“It’s my first time on a ship from outer space, but I’m the one who feels alien,” Victor says at last. “How many people do you think can say the same?”

“Too many,” Bruce says. They’ve been walking for several minutes and have found nothing of interest; he’d expected the ship’s interior to be labyrinthine, but he feels silly wandering around without a guide to follow. “Can you interface with the ship? Hack into a map?”

“I can try,” Victor says.

His eyes narrow in concentration, and soon the light on his forehead flickers and glows orange.

“I think I can do this,” he says, then turns around. “Huh.”

When Bruce follows his gaze, he finds himself face-to-face with a levitating piece of oblong machinery. There’s no S.T.A.R. Labs logo that Bruce can see, but just as Bruce realizes that it appears to be made of the same material as the walls and floors of the ship, it begins to change.

Over the span of a few seconds the strange machine seems to melt into the floor, its surface shifting and flowing like liquid metal until its shape is different altogether. Now it stands waist-high, pulsing softly from within with a gentle blue light. It looks remarkably like a terminal, or perhaps a control centre, but it contains no display or visible buttons—only a hole in the center of the flat upper surface in the shape of a particularly familiar pentagon. 

“Incredible,” Victor breathes.

Without warning, an orange light envelops the terminal as the light on Victor’s forehead begins to scan its surface. He holds up a hand and reveals his palm, where a number of small plates shift and unfold to reveal a small glowing protrusion.

Bruce tilts his head toward the terminal, watching as Victor aligns the protrusion on his palm with the console and presses it into place.

The light on Victor’s forehead turns blue once more, and the ship comes to life.

“Welcome.”

The word echoes around them in a smooth voice, repeating the word until it begins to warp; it’s as if offering a simple greeting has been enough to cause a minor malfunction, but the longer Bruce listens the easier it becomes to identify other words, too:

“Bienvenue—bienvenido—Добро пожаловать—ようこそ—ברוכים הבאים——”

He recognizes a number of languages, all bidding them welcome in what appears to be a linguistic shotgun greeting. Among the languages he does understand, there are foreign syllables that Bruce doesn’t recognize as human, and he can’t help but marvel at the sensation. It’s one thing to theorize about hearing an alien language, but it’s an entirely new experience hearing it in person.

“I think I can communicate with this thing,” Victor says. His remaining eyebrow is furrowed in concentration, and when he glances at Bruce there’s a hint of a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I got it.”

•

The incident reports filed by S.T.A.R. Labs personnel had included photographs of the Genesis Chamber after Luthor’s interference. The FBI had gotten involved in the investigation, and there had been an international hearing held to address the issue of the ship. The entire portable laboratory had been dismantled and ferried off for further investigation and would ultimately serve as evidence in Luthor’s trial.

Now, hardly any evidence of his presence remains, and Bruce is well-prepared for the sight that greets him once the door slides open to reveal the chamber.

For Bruce, the most memorable feature from the photographs has always been the amniotic fluid. The birth of Luthor’s creature had turned the fluid in the bottom of the chamber into a sea of thick, chunky organic matter, but now the chamber before Bruce is filled with an opaque fluid the colour of blood plasma. The floor drops off just beyond the entrance, where a partially-destroyed, intricately-carved walkway leads down into the bottom of the chamber and disappears into the fluid. At once, the structure may have been level, but it’s crumbling in places and appears to have been nearly cleaved in two. There are scorch marks running the length of it, and Bruce can see where parts of the walls have been damaged in the same way.

“Whatever Luthor did, it fried the ship,” Victor says. In the time that Bruce has spent taking in the scenery, a new terminal has materialized in front of Victor, who is now in the process of creating another activation key. “It has enough charge to remain active, but I don’t think it’ll be flying back to Krypton any time soon.” 

Bruce glances down from his spot on the scaffolding. He can’t see the chamber’s floor through the fluid. It’s hard to say how far down the chamber actually extends. “We’ll make it fast. We need to know what the Kryptonians knew about Steppenwolf and the mother boxes.”

He sees Victor’s hand lock into place on the terminal, and the room begins to fill with the same liquid metal that had made up the first terminal. The metal begins to take shape before their eyes, creating a living scene: a broad-shouldered, imposing figure takes form before a living backdrop of metal planets, armies of humanoid creatures, and three familiar boxes.

In the same smooth voice, the Kryptonian ship begins to speak, recounting the entire history of Apokolips over the course of the next several minutes. Bruce and Victor listen raptly to the story, learning not just of Steppenwolf, but of a cosmic warlord named Darkseid.

It’s unsettling how familiar the story sounds to Bruce. When he’d first encountered a parademon, he couldn’t help but think that it was a creature straight out of his nightmares. The ship tells him of Apokoliptian wastelands, which fills Bruce with a sense of dread that twists in his chest. It’s too familiar an image in his mind, and it’s a lot of information to take in at once.

Bruce thinks of Luthor standing in his place, listening to the ship tell stories of not just one planet, but dozens, maybe hundreds. As far as he knows, Steppenwolf and Darkseid may be the least of their concerns, and Luthor may have gained access to all of it.

When the ship’s monologue finally comes to a close, Bruce finds himself wishing that it had better news—maybe that Steppenwolf had been too busy to answer the phone, or that Apokolips had somehow fallen in the past thousand years—but now that his suspicions have been confirmed, he’s filled with a grim satisfaction, and his new goal is abundantly clear. Steppenwolf will return for his property, and Bruce will need to gather a group who can breach his defenses, withstand his army of parademons, and send him away empty-handed.

The last of the metal fluid disperses, leaving the chamber clear once more.

“So… guess we got what we came for,” Victor says finally. The terminal melts away as he disengages his hand and turns back to Bruce. “You ready to leave?”

Bruce glances back down at the chamber, scanning the fluid’s surface and allowing his gaze to travel up the walls. There are no pods or tanks or anything of the sort that he can see, but the walls are covered in root-like growths and he can see what looks like empty tubing dangling from the highest part of the curved ceiling. It would be preferable to remain in the ship long enough to gather more information about Steppenwolf’s weaknesses, but he can come back another day to do that. 

“One more question. If I wanted information about a particular person from Krypton, how would I get it?”

He addresses his question to the room at large, ignoring the strange look that Victor gives him.

“In order to access personal information about a private citizen of Krypton, genetic material must be provided for analysis.”

Genetic material is precisely what Bruce was prepared for. 

He reaches into his belt and produces one of the vials, holding it in the air for the ship to inspect. He hasn’t noticed any cameras, alien or otherwise, that might indicate that they’re being watched, but the ship’s AI appears to understand their position, their speech, their questions; it’s strange to think that this might have been a technology that Clark could have been familiar with, if things had gone differently. 

“I have genetic material. Now what?”

“Preparing Genesis Chamber to receive genetic material.”

The ship’s strange metallic liquid seeps from all directions once more to form a small, cup-sized receptacle at the base of the ruined walkway. Beneath it, a platform takes shape and begins to glow with a soft blue light, illuminating the cup it as if it were Krypton’s own Holy Grail.

“Genesis Chamber ready to analyze genetic sample,” the ship announces. “Please place the genetic sample in the collection unit.”

Bruce uncorks the vial and empties its contents—a small sample of the finely ground black dust that had once made up part of Clark’s stomach—into the receptacle. A seamless lid forms over the receptacle once Bruce steps away, and the platform begins to descent below the fluid’s cloudy surface until it’s out of sight. 

Cautious, he makes his way back up the walkway. He understands that Luthor had intentionally contaminated the chamber with his own blood in order to mutate General Zod’s body, and he wants to avoid taking any risks that may end with Clark’s DNA mixing with his own.

At the top of the room, Victor fixes him with a suspicious stare. “Am I missing something?”

Bruce doesn’t answer.

“Acknowledging presence of genetic material. Analyzing.” The ship pauses, then says: “I’ve identified the host as: Lor-Em of Kandor.”

Lor-Em of Kandor? That’s neither the name nor the planet Bruce was expecting.

“Who’s that?” Victor asks.

“Not the person who owns that DNA.” Bruce is fairly sure—more than sure, in fact—that Lor-Em is not the name he’d heard on the worldwide broadcast from years ago. Even now that he’s grown more accustomed to thinking of Clark as Clark and not as Superman, he remembers the sound of _Kal-El_ so clearly in his mind. He’d heard that name coming from every monitor in the batcave. He’ll never forget it. “Re-analyze it.”

There’s a longer pause. “Reanalyzing. I’ve identified the host as: Nam-Ek of Vathlo.”

“That’s wrong,” Bruce says again. He rests a hand on his belt, preparing to pull out another vial. It’s possible that destroying Clark’s cells with kryptonite has done something to render his genes unreadable, but Bruce has samples of preserved tissue with him that may be of more use. “The host is Kal-El of Krypton. What if—”

“Hold on. The DNA belongs to _Superman_?” Victor interrupts, turning toward Bruce with a narrowed eye. “Where exactly did you get those samples?” 

“That’s not important,” Bruce says flatly, remembering the weight of a kryptonite scalpel in his hand, Clark’s bones between his fingers. “What is important is that I know exactly who it belongs to. Analyze the sample again.”

“Reanalyzing,” says the ship smoothly. “I’ve identified the host as: Wedna Kil-Gor.”

Bruce’s makes a frustrated sound. With the ship’s advanced technology, identifying a distinct genetic code shouldn’t be an impossible task, and the kryptonite shouldn’t have been able to alter Clark’s DNA so radically as to render it unreadable. “The genetic sample wasn’t taken from either of those people. Is it a problem with the sample? A system malfunction?”

“A larger sample size may allow for a more detailed analysis,” the ship suggests.

The compartment in Bruce’s belt flips open. He uncorks the vial of cartilage with his thumb. “Send up the containment unit.”

He repeats the process, emptying the vial’s contents into the now-empty receptacle until it covers itself and descends once more. He can feel Victor’s gaze burning into the side of his cowl, and he crosses his arms over his chest, tapping a finger impatiently on one of his gauntlets as the ship analyzes the newest sample.

“I’ve identified the host as: Feln of Xan City.”

Christ. It’s practically choosing names out of a hat.

“Reanalyze again. These samples were taken directly from Kal-El’s body. All of those samples should contain the exact same genetic template,” he says irritably. “What the hell is making it so difficult to read?”

“My analysis reveals that the genetic material provided is undergoing perpetual genetic mutation,” the ship replies. “Further analysis may provide accurate identification if the genetic structure has been stabilized.”

Bruce inhales slowly, and has to suppress the urge to ask the ship why the fuck it didn’t just tell him that in the first place. “Okay, how do we stabilize it? What’s causing the mutation?”

“The genetic material provided contains the genetic code for every Kryptonian citizen developed after the implementation of the Kryptonian Registry of Citizens. If the Registry of Citizens is separated from the host’s DNA, the host’s gene sequence will normalize.”

Bruce meets Victor’s gaze. Victor appears to be just as lost as he does, but when the ship doesn’t continue, he asks, “And… what exactly is the Registry of Citizens?”

“The Registry of Citizens contains the predetermined genetic blueprints for a over hundred million citizens of Krypton.”

“Creepy,” Victor says, echoing Bruce’s own thoughts perfectly. “So… Superman had all of that DNA in _his_ DNA?”

“Seems that way,” Bruce agrees. “But Superman’s DNA should still be hidden in there somewhere. There has to be a base template, and maybe the rest is just layered over it. What can you tell me about someone named Kal-El?”

“The Registry of Citizens contains a genetic template identical to that of Kal-El of Urrika,” the ship says.

Kal-El of Urrika. That’s the closest they’ve come to a positive ID, and for a moment Bruce is filled with a flicker of hope. “Would Kal-El of Urrika be about thirty-five Earth years old?”

“He’d look like this,” says Victor helpfully. The light on his forehead has faded to orange again, and suddenly Clark appears in the empty space on the scaffolding next to Bruce—a life-size, shimmering hologram of Superman, complete with a cape that billows gently in an unseen wind.

He looks just as he had in life, and Bruce can’t seem to look away.

“Kal-El of Urrika was one of the first Kryptonians to take the house name of El. He became the second Bethgar of Urrika and reigned until his death.”

“Do a visual analysis,” Victor suggests. “It could still—”

“Visual analysis inconclusive.”

As quickly as it had appeared, the hologram flickers out of sight, leaving a vacant space on the scaffolding once more.

Bruce clears his throat. “Okay. So... Kal-El’s DNA is mutating, but that’s a reversible process. How can we do that? Is it possible to isolate and extract the one unidentifiable genetic template from the rest?”

“The genetic codes contained in the Registry of Citizens may be separated from the unidentified genetic sequence. Do you wish to proceed?”

Not quite what Bruce had expected, but it’ll do. He glances at Victor. “What do you think?”

“I think I’d like to know what this is all about,” Victor says. “What’s so important about Superman’s DNA that you need to go through all this trouble to get it?” 

He still doesn’t seem to trust Bruce completely, and Bruce doesn’t blame him. After Luthor’s arrest, his operation had been blown wide open, his genetic experiments revealed for the world to see. Silas Stone would likely know the extent of Luthor’s meddling, and if Bruce were in Victor’s place, he wouldn’t trust someone with Kryptonian DNA.

“I’m not sure,” Bruce says truthfully. What would he do with Kryptonian DNA, anyway? Combine Clark’s DNA with his own and grow a semi-human Superman? He’s not that reckless—hell, he’s not that stupid—and the world doesn’t need Clark so desperately that it would accept a mutated monster in his place. In any case, Luthor had used an entire corpse to create that monster, and the process had damaged the ship heavily. What could Bruce expect a damaged amniotic chamber to grow from a sliver of tissue?

“I’m trusting you on this,” Victor says slowly. “But since I know you’re not going to do anything with the Registry or Superman’s DNA, I’d say go ahead.”

•

There is no existing genetic template for the Kal-El they know.

The ship analyzes the Registry of Citizens and relays this information to Bruce and Victor with absolute certainty. The genetic code held within Kal-El’s cells does not match that of any known Kryptonian citizen, and while it is distinctly Kryptonian in origin, the ship also manages to detect a number of unusual mutations within his DNA.

“It makes sense,” Victor says. “If the Registry is in his DNA, it might not recognize his DNA as being any different. And if he had to adapt to our planet when he was young… maybe that’s what made him the way he was. Not just because he was from somewhere else, but because living here made him stronger.”

The ship, seemingly content to build upon Victor’s theory, begins to provide exposition about Krypton’s atmosphere and solar system, but Bruce quickly finds himself lost in thought. 

Coming to earth as an infant would have made Clark stronger in all aspects—not just physically, but mentally, too. Clark’s life had been spent hiding among humans, much the same as Bruce has hidden himself, and in the end he had to eliminate the last known remaining member of his own species and give his life in sacrifice of the planet that had raised him. It reminds Bruce of the vicar’s words at Clark’s funeral. 'The earth shall give birth to her dead', he’d told the crowd. Bruce hadn’t believed it then, but if the information that the ship has given them about his strength and his genetic makeup is true, it’s possible that Bruce was wrong in his initial dismissal. Maybe the earth would have welcomed him as a treasured guest for his services, an eternal guardian keeping watch over the home that had raised him.

But maybe the earth might give him back.

“When Luthor brought General Zod’s body here, how long did it take to turn into that thing?” Bruce asks suddenly.

Victor’s head swings back toward him, his human eye narrowing as the ship says: “The metamorphosis of the Kryptohominis abomination required eleven days to fully mature.”

Eleven days. Hell, what had Bruce done during those eleven days? Hatched a plan to kill the only person capable of stopping that monster. Made a goddamn fool of himself. “If it took eleven days to make something that large, how long would it take to grow something smaller out of uncontaminated DNA? Something human-sized?”

“The Genesis Chamber allows Kryptonian cells to proliferate at a highly accelerated rate,” reports the ship. 

Victor whips around in a whir of movement. “Remember when I said you weren’t going to use—”

“Advising: replication of sentient Kryptonian citizens is a forbidden action. What do you wish to do?”

Bruce can feel Victor’s gaze burning into him, but his own gaze is fixed on the amniotic fluid below. Dark shapes slither beneath the surface, tending to some unknown task. He can almost imagine how a humanoid shape might look, suspended in the depths of the chamber.

He can almost imagine Luthor watching over the same scene. 

“...Nothing,” Bruce says after several seconds of silence. “I wish to do nothing.”

The Construction Commence

With Victor’s suspicion hanging in the air and Bruce’s questions answered to a satisfactory degree, they make their way back out of the ship with a plan to rendezvous in Gotham. Victor and Diana have yet to meet, and by now she should already be waiting at the cave for them to return with the intel they’d been seeking.

To Bruce’s surprise, Victor takes to the sky once they step out of the containment centre, leaving a purple-tinged arc in his wake. He hasn’t bothered to ask for directions, and Bruce doesn’t bother calling out after him to give them.

“Alfred, Victor’s on his way. He’ll be there soon.”

“I’ll meet him at the door,” Alfred replies dutifully. “Miss Prince is currently waiting for you both. Shall I tell her where you’re coming from, or would you prefer I stall and tell her you’ve been held up in traffic?”

“She already knows where I am,” Bruce says. He grapples to the top of a nearby construction site, pulling himself onto the top floor before glancing around the city. “Just make sure she doesn’t see the samples in the cave.”

•

The tables are clear of Kryptonian materials when Bruce finally makes it back to the cave; he throws his cowl and gauntlets aside and steps up behind Diana, who has taken a seat at the chair in front of Bruce’s computer. Victor glances at him from the other side of the lab, where he appears to have taken an interest in one of the diagnostic screens that Bruce is running nearby, and Bruce notes that he’s back in his grey GCU sweatsuit once more, shielding his body out of modesty, or perhaps out of respect.

“Glad to see you made it over. Victor fill you in already?” Bruce asks.

Diana gives him a brief once-over and nods. “He said you confirmed that Luthor contacted Steppenwolf.”

“You were right about him. Right about the mother boxes, too. Assuming those parademon scouts have been feeding him information to back up whatever Luthor told him, we can probably expect an invasion in the next few months. Looks like we’ll need to build that team after all.” Bruce looks over Diana’s head at Victor, who approaches with his hands shoved into his pockets. “That’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about. We’ve been talking about gathering a group of people. Meta-humans, people—”

“People who have abilities,” Victor finishes. His footsteps are heavy as he walks across the room, circling slowly around the tables with his gaze fixed on the floor. “I assumed that’s what this Steppenwolf thing was about. But if you want me to join a team, I need to know you’re not keeping secrets.”

“No secrets,” Bruce says.

Victor turns his head slowly to meet Bruce’s gaze. “Did you tell her about the Genesis Chamber?”

Diana raises an eyebrow and folds her hands over her lap, leaning back in the chair with an expectant look. She already knows about the Genesis Chamber—specifically, she knows about its existence and its role in Luthor’s scheme, but she doesn’t yet know about Bruce’s interest in it. “What about it?”

“We found it in the ship,” Victor says. “The room Luthor used to bring that big ugly Kryptonian to life. Bruce thought we could use it to get information about Superman using his DNA.”

Diana makes a thoughtful face as Bruce unlatches his cape and drapes it over a table. “Interesting. So what did you learn in the chamber?”

Victor is back to staring hard at Bruce, which means it’s probably time for Bruce to come clean. Luckily, Bruce has nothing to hide, no sinister motives to conceal. “A very thorough DNA analysis revealed that within Superman’s DNA is something called the Registry of Citizens. It contains the genetic code of every person who ever lived on his planet, and it’s probably in every single cell in his body.”

“We managed to separate his DNA from the Registry,” Victor adds, “so now we have the DNA of every single Kryptonian _and_ a pure sample of DNA from Superman.”

Diana hums thoughtfully, still watching Bruce as he tosses pieces of his suit on a nearby table. It’s difficult to determine what she’s thinking. Her face gives nothing away, and she looks mildly interested at best. “It sounds like a very important discovery. What are you planning to do with all of the DNA?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Victor says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You already know my father was studying the change engine. You knew all along that he theorized about integrating it with the ship to power it up, didn’t you?”

“I know that he used it on you, but that’s all the information I have,” Bruce says.

His nonchalance doesn’t seem to impress Victor, who steps between the tables to look Bruce in the eye. 

“The change engine, mother box, whatever—it sat on a shelf for years without anybody getting anything out of it. The night Superman died, it lit up like a Christmas tree. You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that you’re interested in the box and Superman’s DNA.” 

“Lex Luthor contacted Steppenwolf inside the ship on that same night,” Bruce tells them. “If the mother box activated that night, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that it activated in response to his presence.”

He can’t bring himself to call it the night that Clark died, not after all that he’s learned from the ship; he’s seen Kryptonian cells die under his microscope, and although he doesn’t understand if it’s due to the presence of the Registry, due to Clark’s natural adaptations to earth, or simply due to Clark’s alien nature, he knows that the cells in Clark’s body are decidedly not dead. Luthor’s own research corroborates that theory, and Bruce suspects that Clark would look the same now as he had when his coffin went in the ground. 

He can’t say with certainty that Clark is dead, nor can he say with certainty that he isn’t interested in exploring the Genesis Chamber’s capabilities. 

“You may be right,” Diana says, “but what we do know is that it was never an option to use the mother box with the Genesis Chamber. Or Superman’s DNA, for that matter. Right, Bruce?”

Bruce gazes at them both for a moment, then flips open the compartment of his belt that still contains the vials. He places them on the table in front of him, revealing the small shards of bone and the slice of liver tissue that he hadn’t submitted for analysis.

“The mother box may have helped you, but I wouldn’t risk using it on him, even if I thought it would work,” Bruce says, now addressing Victor directly. “We know it’s powerful. Maybe powerful enough to bring him back. But it’s too volatile to use without knowing how it works, and we can’t risk alerting Steppenwolf, so we need to make sure the mother box remains hidden for now.”

Victor still doesn’t appear convinced. He looks between Bruce and Diana, waiting for further explanation until Diana says, “He’s right. It would be too dangerous to use the mother box. But whatever you’re thinking of using the Genesis Chamber for, Bruce…”

Her gaze drops to the vials on the table. Her brow furrows, and when she looks up at Bruce again, he knows immediately that she’s caught on. 

“Bruce, you can’t.”

“I could,” he says.

The room goes quiet for a moment. _Can't_ is not a truth, but _could_ is.

“You’re not actually thinking about trying to bring him back,” Victor says. “Right?”

Diana pushes herself out of Bruce’s chair and stands in front of him until he meets her gaze.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” she says gently. “You can’t bring Superman back from the dead, Bruce. He’s at peace now. It would be dishonourable to do to him what Luthor did to his brother.”

Dishonourable. It’s the kindest word she’s used to describe the atrocity that Luthor committed, and it’s a kindness that Bruce doesn’t deserve.

“We don’t know that,” Bruce says softly. “None of us know for sure that he’s at peace. We don’t even know for sure that he’s dead. We wouldn’t have to do what Luthor did before, we’d just need… DNA. Clark’s DNA.” 

In Bruce’s peripheral vision, Victor shifts uncomfortably. “What does that mean, ‘we don’t know for sure’? Didn’t you watch him die?”

“I watched that thing put a hole in his chest the size of my fist,” Bruce says. “But he’s… you heard what the ship said. His cells are different, stronger than normal Kryptonian cells. You can look at those samples yourself if you don’t believe me. It’s not dead tissue. There’s no cell growth, no movement, but his cells don’t die unless they’re exposed to kryptonite. Normal human cells, they divide until they hit the limit and can’t divide anymore, and then they die. But not Clark’s.”

“So you’re saying he’s… not dead,” Victor says slowly. “You know how crazy that sounds, don’t you? If he’s not dead, what the hell is he?”

“I don’t know. I just know that there’s something keeping his cells from decaying.”

“You think it’s the Registry?”

Bruce turns away from Victor and Diana and takes a breath, walking slowly along the wall to gather his thoughts. “I don’t know. Maybe. I just think there’s more to this than we thought. If he’s in that grave but he’s not dead, if there’s a chance that we can do something to help him heal…”

“And what if he is?” Diana asks. “What if he _is_ dead, Bruce? You saw what happened when Luthor used that chamber to bring one of his people back. You can’t do that to him.”

“But what if I could?” Bruce turns around at last and stares at Diana, who’s watching him with her hands crossed over her chest. “Look at us, Diana. We’re a team of three. _Three_ against Steppenwolf’s army. If Clark is in that grave and he’s not dead, why shouldn’t we do everything in our power to help his body heal and get him on our side? Imagine what we could do with someone like Clark on our team. Imagine what we could do for the world.”

“Bruce, you saw what that creature did to him. If he were still here—”

“If Clark was still here, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Bruce says firmly. “But he’s not here. He’s in a hole in the ground, and he should be dead, but he’s not. That’s the reality we have to deal with. He’s in there because of what Luthor's monster did, and I couldn’t save him from that. But I can save him now.”

Diana shakes her head. “No, Bruce. You can’t carry guilt because of what happened. It wasn’t your responsibility to keep him safe.”

“I didn’t keep him safe when I shot him up with kryptonite,” Bruce says. “That thing might have put a hole in his chest, but he was weak because of the kryptonite. Because of what I did.”

“I thought… the newspapers said you two were fighting together,” Victor says slowly.

Bruce scoffs, turning away and planting his palms on a tabletop so that he doesn’t have to look Victor or Diana in the eye. “Yeah. What the newspapers didn’t say is that I pumped him full of kryptonite before that monster was ever in the picture. He might have been invulnerable on the outside, but on the inside… there’s nothing left of him.”

It feels as if someone has punched a hole in Bruce’s own chest. He’s known the cause of Clark’s demise for nearly a year now, has carried it on his shoulders, thought of it every time he’s walked by the kryptonite spear in the glass display. Clark wouldn’t be in the ground if it weren’t for Bruce; it had been Luthor’s fault too, and the mutated Zod’s fault, but Clark might have survived the fight if Bruce hadn’t been so blind to the truth. Martha Kent wouldn’t have buried her son. The world wouldn’t have lost a hero.

It would take fewer than eleven days to bring Superman back into the world, and with Steppenwolf’s shadow looming over the planet, it feels like there’s no better time to try.

“Jesus,” Victor says quietly. Bruce can hear Diana shush him, and although he doesn’t look back, he listens to the sound of Diana’s footsteps as she approaches him and rests a hand on his shoulder.

“Bruce, what happened to him was not your fault. Whatever you may have done didn’t affect his powers. It didn’t make him weak. He fought bravely and he destroyed the creature with your help.”

Bruce doesn’t respond to that. It simply isn’t true, and she knows it.

“I appreciate the thought, but I know what happened to him. I know how to use the ship, I know how to access his DNA. If there’s a chance that I can use it to bring him back without turning him into a monster, why shouldn’t I take it?”

Diana’s hand doesn’t leave Bruce’s shoulder, even as the silence begins to stretch to an uncomfortable length. “Even if you believe he can be saved, we don’t know how coming back would change him,” she says gently. “We don’t know what sort of state he might be in. It could be dangerous, it could be time-consuming… we might not have time to try before Steppenwolf arrives, and we have to be ready to fight.”

“We can’t defend ourselves with just three people,” Bruce argues. “You said your people defeated Steppenwolf before, but that was with three armies. Right now, we have you, we have Victor, and we have me. I can hold my own against a few parademons, but against an entire army?”

He can still hear the beat of their insectoid wings, and from his dreams he remembers the phantom force of a punch against the back of his head. “We’re hardly enough to keep Steppenwolf at bay,” he says quietly, turning to face Diana at last. “Without someone like Superman, what chance do we have?”

He glances back at Victor, who appears to have been staring pensively at a spot on the floor, and finally looks up once Bruce is done speaking.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. “About not being enough, I mean. The scout ship told us what Steppenwolf did to those other planets. I don’t know about you, and I know you’ve got some firepower,” he says, nodding first at Diana, then Bruce, “but I still have no idea what I’m capable of. I don’t know if the three of us together would be enough to put Steppenwolf down for good. And if you’re right about Superman and the ship…”

“But what if he’s not?” Diana holds Bruce’s gaze. “You said it yourself. You don’t know for sure what happened to him. You don’t know what might happen if you try to bring him back the way Luthor did.”

“Then I won’t do it the way Luthor did,” Bruce says. “What Luthor did was intentional. He created a monster on purpose. I’m not saying we need to combine my DNA with his… we just have to use his own.”

Diana folds her arms over her chest once more and sighs. It doesn’t feel like she’s close to changing her mind, but Bruce can tell that Victor siding with him is forcing her to rethink her argument. Even if Bruce can just take her to the ship and develop a reasonable plan—

“How would you do it?” she asks. “Assuming it were possible.”

Bruce thinks about his hand buried in the dark, empty cavern of Clark’s chest.

“I have an idea,” he says.

•

Inside the Kryptonian ship, Bruce, Victor, and Diana find the Genesis Chamber with ease.

“I think the ship has enough charge in it to last a while,” Victor says as his light flickers from blue to orange and back. He’s interfacing with the ship again, his palm pressed against a terminal that had materialized the moment they’d stepped inside. “If we do this, we’ll need to take it slow and steady. The ship should be able to use Superman’s DNA as a template for developing multiple organ systems without overtaxing its energy reserves.”

Bruce glances at Diana. The thought of producing a full set of internal organs seems as appealing to her now as it had on the trip over—which is to say, not at all, but she’s smart enough to understand that what Bruce is proposing is far safer than anything she may have had in mind. “Think of it as bioprinting. With Clark’s DNA, the ship can grow fully-functioning organs within days that should be identical to his own. Minimal risk of rejection, and if there’s anything in his body that we don’t have—”

“The ship will be able to provide it,” Diana finishes. She glances around the chamber, taking in the ruined walls and the tarp-covered hole in the ceiling. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do once the… printing is done?”

“We’ll have to transport the body to the ship, but it won’t be a problem to dig him up. We’ll just need to get him on the ship without someone noticing.” 

“Should be easy,” Victor says.

Bruce smiles faintly. “Should be. Then it’s just a matter of making sure the transplant takes. We can’t keep him in the ship while he heals, but if we can find somewhere to keep him in Metropolis, we can bring him back if the operation goes south.”

He’s already developed some ideas. If Victor and Diana agree to the plan, Bruce will need to act quickly to find a safe place that Clark can stay during his recovery. He can think of a few people who would be glad to have Clark back in their lives.

Diana gazes down at the chamber. There’s a large spot on the furthest wall where a thick, web-like network of tissue has withered and died, and her gaze lingers on it for several long seconds.

“I don’t like this idea,” she says finally. “If something goes wrong, you’ll need to be prepared.”

“I’ll be ready for it,” Bruce says. “But I need you to trust me on this, Diana.”

She watches him for a moment before nodding, but Bruce feels no immediate flood of relief. Having Diana’s support, however reluctantly given, is a bonus, but Bruce has a feeling that he would have carried out the plan even without her approval.

“How long will it take once the ship has his DNA?”

“Synthesis of multiple Kryptonian internal structures will require approximately three days to achieve full tissue maturation,” the ship reports. Diana raises a brow, glancing around the room and finally looking to Victor, who shrugs with one shoulder, as if to say _you asked_.

“Three days to go to Kansas and back?”

“We won’t need three days,” Bruce says. Three days is not nearly as much time as he was expecting to get, but then again, he’s hardly asking for the ship to grow another alien behemoth. Three days will be plenty of time to fly to Kansas and back, and it should be enough time to make a stop along the way. “Think you can stay here and monitor the ship’s progress if we fly out to pick up the body?”

“I can’t stay during the day, but I can come back at night and keep an eye on things,” Victor replies.

Satisfied, Bruce nods and descends the walkway. Diana has wandered down to the surface of the amniotic fluid, and as Bruce approaches her he can see that she’s still studying the interior of the chamber; her gaze flits across the walls and over the surface of the amber lake, lingering briefly on the tangle of lifeless stalks and broken tubing that hang limply from the ceiling far overhead. 

“Well,” Bruce says, flipping open the vial-filled compartment of his belt, “guess there’s no time like the present.”

As he pulls out a vial—bone shards, cartilage, the last of the viable liver tissue—the collection unit materializes on its platform.

“Preparing Genesis Chamber to receive genetic sample.”

Bruce pops open the vials and pours their contents into the collection unit. The bone shards clink quietly against the metal sides, but the cartilage and liver fall in soundlessly. “That’s the last of it.”

The collection unit ripples shut and sinks beneath the fluid’s surface. “Acknowledging presence of genetic material. Analyzing.” 

Bruce tucks the empty vials into his belt.

“Warning: analysis reveals that the genetic material provided is undergoing perpetual genetic—”

“Proceed with extraction of the Registry of Citizens,” Bruce says firmly. 

“Now extracting Registry of Citizens. Registry of Citizens successfully extracted. Now analyzing remaining genetic material.” The ship goes quiet. Beneath the surface of the fluid, Bruce sees a long, dark shape moving in their direction. “I’ve identified the host as: Kal-El of Earth. Preparing to construct all internal organ systems.” 

Victor makes a sound of relief, and Bruce lets out a slow breath of his own, immensely relieved that the ship isn’t going to force them to relive the agonizing process of explaining Clark Kent’s existence. 

Diana doesn’t appear to understand what exactly they’re relieved about, but when she meets Bruce’s eyes again, she returns the small smile that he gives her.

“Looks like that’s it,” he says. “Now we wait.”

“There are three days and six hours remaining until full tissue maturation,” says the ship helpfully.

Three days, six hours. Luthor’s project had taken just over eleven days— it had taken two hundred and seventy-one hours for the ship to transform General Zod’s corpse into a horrifying monster.

Bruce can do a hell of a lot better in just seventy-eight.

**III**

As they prepare to depart for Kansas, Bruce hits a speed bump in his plan: _The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service._

Of all the things Bruce had expected to hear after dialing Martha Kent’s phone number, this is the lowest on the list. Informing Martha of the plan seems like a risky move, but ultimately a necessary one; the Kent homestead is close enough to the cemetery that Martha could visit Clark’s grave daily, and it wouldn’t do to have Martha happen upon an empty grave with no explanation, and with what Bruce knows of Clark’s relationship with his mother, it had only felt appropriate that she be in on the plan.

But as it happens, Martha Kent no longer lives at the same address. She’s moved to a new apartment near the diner she works at in Smallville, and the landline number associated with the Kent farm hasn’t yet been set up. The move must have been fairly recent, since the farmhouse and property appear to be new listings on the Comanche Realty website, and it automatically rules out the farm as a potential safe place where Clark can recover.

Bruce stares at the photos of the farmhouse on his phone screen, his thumb hovering over the Contact Agent button.

•

To Bruce’s relief, Lois Lane’s phone has not been disconnected.

Calling her should be a cathartic experience. She already knows who Bruce is, as well as what he’s done to and for Clark. On the night of Clark’s death she’d even seen his face. At the time, in the grips of an existential terror the likes of which Bruce has never experienced, he hadn’t given any thought to his ruined cowl and failing electronics.

He’d had more important things to worry about.

Following Clark’s funeral, Bruce had braced himself for a visit from Lois Lane, top reporter from the Daily Planet, fully expecting her to blame him for Clark’s death, threaten to expose his secret, or to simply express her grief. He had witnessed it first-hand, after all, and Lois had been the one to put Clark’s body in Bruce’s hands. She’d allowed Bruce the intimacy of carrying Clark to the Batmobile, had trusted him to return it for burial, had trusted him to keep Clark’s secret even in death.

She didn’t have a choice at the time, but Bruce had considered it an honour all the same.

“Miss Lane,” he says.

Lois had answered the phone with confidence, but when she speaks again, she sounds hesitant, unsure. “Mr. Wayne, I—this is unexpected.”

It’s been some time since Bruce has heard her voice, but the few times he’s heard her speak on television or online in the months since the funeral, her voice has always resonated with him. She’d been the only one capable of breaking the storm of his rage, had sent him feeling with only a few words.

He’s read a few articles of hers since then. Her work is admirable. Honourable.

“Miss Lane, I won’t waste your time. I’d like to see you in person as soon as you’re free. I have to ask something of you.”

There’s a long stretch of silence. Bruce would almost assume she’d hung up, if it weren’t for the low murmur of voices in the background. She must be at the Planet, or perhaps elsewhere in the city. He hopes he hasn’t caught her on a trip out of town. They don’t have time to spare, and this is the only plan Bruce has.

“Yes, of course,” Lois says. “Just give me a time and place.”

•

The day has only just begun, yet the sky overcast and grey, thick clouds stretching across the sky like a somber blanket covering the city. The approaching winter seems to have inspired many to place fresh offerings at the Heroes Park memorial before the snow begins to fall; fresh flowers lie scattered around the elegant silver crest, with half-melted candles and photographs and hand-written notes laid out carefully on the ground. Some of the items look fairly new, but there are few people on the streets this time of day, and fewer still in the park. The handful of pedestrians that Bruce does see, rushing with hands in pockets and hoods drawn up, don’t appear to notice him.

Lois arrives in a black coat. It’s difficult to tell if she’s preparing for the cold season, or if the time of year has renewed her grief, too.

As they stand before Superman’s memorial, Bruce tells her everything. 

By now, the story has grown long and convoluted; the Kryptonian ship, the story of Steppenwolf and his army of demons, the Apokoliptian mother boxes and their immense power. He tells her about Diana and Victor and the other meta-humans on Luthor’s drive, about what he’d discovered in Clark’s DNA, and about his plans for the Genesis Chamber. 

She takes the news remarkably well. It’s been a long year for her, no doubt, but she’s still the best journalist in Metropolis. Shocking information must be an everyday occurrence for her.

It comes as a surprise that when his story is finished, Lois has something to share with him, too: a story about Clark’s biological father, who had once provided an explanation of the sun’s restorative and fortifying effects on Clark’s body. It sounds similar to what Bruce and Victor had uncovered in the scout ship, and so it seems natural to incorporate the sun into their plan. 

Clark will recover in the apartment they’d once shared, where the rising sun can wash over him and allow him to return to consciousness as naturally and as peacefully as waking from sleep. 

Before they part ways, Bruce’s curiosity gets the better of him. 

He brings up the Kent farmhouse, and with a sad smile, Lois explains Martha’s brief and futile struggle with expenses. Apparently, Bruce had been right to think of her as an anchor for Clark. His mother has always been a tether to humanity and his life before Superman, but in a way, Lois has too. She tells him that Clark was always most comfortable around people who didn’t know him as Superman, but as Clark Kent—people who, above all else, saw him as a man, and not a god.

Bruce only hopes that it isn’t too late for him to try.

•

They arrive in Central City the next day.

As elusive as Barry Allen is, the combination of Waller’s notes and Victor’s unparalleled ability to access camera footage, cellular data networks, and the internet—the entire internet, apparently—make him incredibly easy to track down. It helps that Barry has a reputation of his own as a part-time hero, even in parts of the world as distant as Australia; he moves quickly, but between Victor’s limitless connection to every form of technology in the modern world and Diana tracking him through his visits to Iron Heights Penitentiary, it isn’t difficult to predict where and when to find him.

Upon Diana’s request, and despite Bruce’s mild protests, they don’t break into Barry’s home; instead they meet him at his front door, greeting him with a clear photograph of his face.

“Barry Allen,” Bruce says lightly. “Bruce Wayne.”

“Diana Prince,” Diana adds. She holds out a hand, which Barry shakes without removing his intensely focused gaze from Bruce’s face. “My friend and I would like to talk to you for a few minutes. May we come in?” 

Barry’s gaze slides from Bruce to the photo. He stares at it for a moment, then plucks the paper from Diana’s hand and takes a reluctant step backward to examine it more closely. “Uh, you guys aren’t—you wouldn’t happen to be _police_ , would you? Because I’m not breaking the law by being here, I actually—oh, you’re looking for this guy? This dude in the photo. Got it.”

As Bruce and Diana step inside, they exchange glances and split off; Bruce wanders further into the room, making his way toward a mannequin and a rather impressive computer display, and Diana remains near the doorway. They already have a backup plan in the event that Barry tries to escape, but Bruce is feeling confident.

“I mean, I don’t actually know the guy in the picture. I’m sure he’s a terrible guy if you’re trying to arrest him, but I _assure_ you that if this has anything to do with the internet bill, it’s just because I used my middle name on the account. Oh, you know what? It’s probably because I’m using Bitcoin, which—I know it sounds weird, but it is a legitimate cryptocurrency and it’s not, like, a black market thing, which I wouldn’t… I don’t know anything about black market browsing, that’s like… _deep web_ stuff. Which I don’t use.”

While Barry continues to defend his internet activity, Bruce makes his way toward the clothed mannequin and studies it with interest. Diana, still near the doorway, seems to be admiring everything else in the room. The walls are filled with what looks like years’ worth of colourful graffiti and lined with bookshelves that are crammed full of journals and notable scientific works. Stacks of books and loose pages litter the floor, while various dry erase boards with illegible text and mathematical equations scrawled across them are propped up for easy reading. Near the back of the room, Barry has numerous computer monitors and flat screens arranged in a chaotic setup that very nearly rivals Bruce’s own. 

The place looks like a mad scientist’s workshop, and Bruce is starting to think they may have underestimated Barry Allen.

“You have an eye for artistic design,” Diana says kindly, turning her gaze back to Barry. “Was all of this your work?”

Bruce leans in to examine the material on the mannequin. He recognizes the fabric: quartz fibre is immune to cracking, cools quickly without melting after exposure to extreme heat, and has a tensile strength twice that of diamond. The harder outer layers are scratched in areas, with deep grooves running along the front of the armoured plates, and parts of the outfit appear to be held together with wire. For a suit cobbled together by a college student, it’s a rather impressive design.

“Oh, uh, yeah, no, the place came like that. I mean, I brought my own TV. So if I’m not under arrest, you know, I have… stuff…” 

“We know you have abilities,” Bruce says without looking away from the suit. He slides a hand into his pocket.

Barry clears his throat. “Oh, that’s really kind of you, but I’m really not into tagging, I’m more of a doodle-on-my-homework person—”

The batarang slips out of Bruce’s hand with a whisper; before he can blink, Diana appears between Bruce and Barry, the batarang in her hand and a furious expression on her face.

“Bruce—”

“What? He wasn’t in any danger, he had plenty of time to catch it,” Bruce says coolly. He hadn’t forgotten Diana’s own inhuman speed, but he’d expected to be allowed to perform one little trick. “Isn’t that right, Barry?”

Barry opens his mouth as if to protest, and suddenly the room erupts in a flash of crackling electricity, sending papers scattering as the batarang in Diana’s hand disappears and reappears in Barry’s hand.

“You guys aren’t police,” he says, pointing a lethal edge at Bruce accusingly.

“No, and we’re not trying to kill you, either,” Diana says carefully.

Barry doesn’t lower the batarang, but he does glare at it for a moment before swinging his head toward Diana. “You’re Batwoman?”

“Actually—”

“The Batcouple,” Barry says, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “Wait, you’re… you guys aren’t actually here to arrest me, right?”

“No,” Bruce says, his amusement beginning to bleed into his voice. “And we’re not—”

“—not together,” Diana says simultaneously, which feels like a more succinct version of what Bruce was about to say. “We wanted to speak with you about something important.”

Barry rubs his finger along the batarang’s edge, a grin still tugging at the edges of his mouth. It seems as if they’ve got his full attention now, and his enthusiasm is making it hard for Bruce to keep a straight face. “Okay, as long as it means you’re not here because I’m a criminal and you’re trying to turn me in.”

Diana and Bruce both laugh. So far, Barry’s warm welcome is a far cry from Victor’s initial skittishness and distrust. It helps that Bruce has been able to introduce himself, rather than having his identity uncovered by someone capable of interfacing with his equipment.

“Bruce and I are putting together a team,” Diana begins carefully.

Bruce nods. “We have another memb—”

“Yes!” Barry points a finger at Bruce, then looks at Diana too, sheepish. “I mean, yes, please. You _do_ have another member. I am so on your team.”

Bruce simply blinks at him, momentarily taken aback by Barry’s enthusiasm, then trades a baffled look with Diana. The expression on her face suggests that she was, like Bruce, expecting Barry to bolt immediately upon learning Bruce’s identity.

“Are you… sure you want to join us?”

“Yep,” Barry says cheerfully. “I would be honoured to join the Bat family. Glad to have me aboard!”

He sticks out his hand once more—the one without the batarang—with a broad grin that only grows wider once Diana shakes his hand a second time. He extends it to Bruce next and gives him a surprisingly firm handshake before tucking the batarang into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Well,” Bruce says, trading another look of mild disbelief with Diana, “it’s nice to meet you, Barry. Welcome to the team.”

•

It doesn’t take long to fill Barry in on the plan. They do it over dinner in Central City, in a private booth where Barry is allowed to react appropriately to the threat of an impending alien invasion, a team of super-powered meta-humans, and a Kryptonian ship acting as an incubator for a full set of internal organs.

“Don’t you think it’s a little crazy that you’re slow-cooking alien body parts?” Barry asks. He’s doing an excellent job of keeping his voice hushed, even considering the bombshell that they’ve just dropped on him. Bruce had actually expected him to be a bit more hesitant like Victor and Diana, but he seems to be completely on board with the idea. “Like, actual alien insides. Did you guys ever stop and think about how disgustingly sci-fi that is?”

“When you say it out loud, it is kind of weird,” Bruce agrees over the rim of his wine glass.

“Extremely weird,” Barry insists, brandishing his fork like a lecturing tool. “Like, _Frankenstein_ weird. Which, now that I’m saying it, that explains why I’m here, right? Bringing on a literal bolt of lightning to help bring him back to life?”

Bruce chuckles quietly. Even Diana, who catches his eye from across the table, seems to be enjoying Barry’s company. “That’s a very interesting connection to make, Barry.” 

“It’s pretty obvious, with the organs and the dead guy and the crazy mad scientist. No offense, Mr. Wayne. But there’s one thing I don’t get,” he says, resting his head in his hands, his eyebrows furrowed in an almost comically intense expression. “How do you know he’s gonna be cool with it? You know, Frankenstein’s monster hated being brought to life. Like, I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but what if he’s a little, you know… angry when he wakes up?”

Bruce has faced Clark’s wrath before, survived the fire in his eyes. He can handle it. “Don’t worry about it,” he tells Barry, “I’ll be prepared for anything.”

The Winter Harvest

Retrieving Clark’s body from Kansas is perhaps one of the most unusual heists Bruce has ever attempted.

Victor stays in Metropolis to keep an eye on the ship, but Barry insists on joining, and Bruce sees no reason why he shouldn’t be allowed to assist. He’s foiled a few high-profile robberies on his own time. It can’t hurt to keep him nearby.

This time of year, the normally lush fields of corn and wheat are shriveled and dead, leaving the landscape devoid of colour. There’s only a light dusting of snow on the ground when the plane lands, and it swirls like dust in the air as they travel along the dirt road that leads to the Smallville Cemetery.

The cemetery is much the same as it had been when Bruce last saw it. It’s hardly been a year since Clark’s death, and yet returning to this field makes it seem as if no time has passed; a cold November wind whips around them as they step out of the van, chilling Bruce even beneath his coat and forcing Barry to zip his hoodie up to his chin and wrap his arms around himself.

“We’re not gonna get arrested for grave robbing, are we? ‘Cause if the real cops show up, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to explain this one.”

“Nobody’s going to arrest us,” Bruce assures him. “Technically, it’s not even grave robbing. We’re just relocating Clark to Metropolis.”

“Great, that makes us resurrectionists. That’s even _worse_ ,” Barry says, now sounding mildly distressed. “Are we gonna put the coffin back in the ground, at least? I mean, are we even going to try to make it look like we weren’t here?”

Bruce hands out a shovel, holding his gaze calmly until Barry takes it from him. “We’ll fill in the hole when the coffin’s out. But unless we want to travel back to Gotham with just the body, the coffin has to come with us.”

Barry seems to consider that as he jams the edge of his shovel into the soil. “Yeah, right. That’s a good idea. It’s not like he’s really dead, but… maybe we’ll just keep the coffin. Just in case he’s… you know. Leaking.”

There’s a pause during which Barry stares at the ground, allowing a moment of silence for the visual to really soak in, but he quickly turns away with a full-body shudder and a faint gagging noise. “Ugh. Nope. Coffin it is.”

•

On the way back to the airport, Bruce sits in the back and allows Barry to take his place in the front seat. Diana drives. They keep a local radio station on for background noise, but the van’s occupants are otherwise silent.

To keep himself busy, Bruce communicates via text with Victor, who has been providing regular updates on the ship’s progress every few hours. There have been no hiccups in the plan so far; the ship has been working steadily, the power levels have been holding up well, and no errant S.T.A.R. Labs personnel appear to have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

_How’s progress?_

_Getting close._

Victor’s response appears as a full-screen alert rather than a text message. The fact that he’s able to communicate with Bruce’s tech directly is equal parts convenient and unsettling. Victor doesn’t technically have a cell phone, which means Bruce is communicating directly with his brain—hard drive? OS?—but it’s a quick and reliable method of communication.

Bruce checks his watch. He’d tried to time the trip so that they would arrive at the ship and be able to begin the process of putting Clark’s organs in place immediately, and as of right now, they’re perfectly on track. Only a few hours, a few more organs, and an entire planet’s worth of DNA is all that’s separating Clark from a second chance at life.

 _Let me know if anything changes_ , Bruce says. He tucks his phone away, sits up in his seat, and closes his eyes.

•

On the evening of the third day, they drive the van containing Clark’s coffin directly to the ship. Victor creates a security bypass to grant Barry, who sits in the driver’s seat disguised as a member of the US Air Force, access to the containment centre. Once the vehicle is safely backed into the loading bay, Barry does a quick circuit around the site to ensure that their mission will go uninterrupted, while Victor, now communicating with Bruce via the cowl on a private network, repeats his trick with the security feeds. They leave Bruce and Diana to unload the coffin together, carrying it like pallbearers through the labyrinthine halls of the ship.

“Everything’s ready to go,” says Victor. He’s made himself at home on the scaffolding, and he watches from the highest point in the room as Barry arrives in a flash of electricity, stopping just short of where Bruce and Diana have placed the coffin on the downward slope of the walkway.

“This is a lot,” he says, looking wide-eyed around the room. “So… should I get warmed up for this, or...?”

“It is very kind of you to offer, Barry, but I think the ship will handle things for us,” Diana replies gently. She glances at Bruce, who hasn’t moved from the lower end of the walkway. “Are you sure you’re ready to do this?”

“If the ship’s ready, I’m ready.”

“Kryptonian tissue maturation complete,” the ship reports.

Satisfied with that response, Diana moves back up the walkway, giving Bruce enough space to extract Clark from his coffin. 

Though clumps of dirt are still clinging to it in places, the plain pine box is still familiar to Bruce. He’d built it, after all. After escorting it to Kansas for the funeral, it seems only right that he’s the one to bring it back. 

As he leans down and curls his fingers underneath the lid, Bruce hesitates. 

There’s a possibility that he’s wrong. There’s always been a chance that he could open the coffin lid to find a corpse in a stage of putrefaction. Unembalmed, Clark would have decayed during his time in the ground. His organs, had they not been incinerated, would have liquefied and seeped into the coffin’s interior, and his brain would have bubbled out his mouth.

Bruce blinks the image away. Diana, Victor, and Barry would not have placed their trust in him for nothing. Lois Lane would not have entrusted Clark to him if she believed there was a chance that he might be wrong. 

But he isn’t. If he were wrong, the scent of Bruce’s mistake would be around them, sticking to their clothes, absorbed into the pinewood.

The body inside the coffin is no cadaver.

He lifts the coffin lid. Still dressed in the suit Bruce had picked out, Clark looks just as he had the day he’d been buried, his eyes closed peacefully and his arms folded over his chest, concealing the truth of Bruce’s failure.

Bruce breathes a sigh of relief, then reaches inside and takes the photograph from Clark’s hands. 

It’s a photograph of his father, if Bruce is correct. Martha’s late husband. Bruce passes the photo to Diana for safekeeping before reaching in and wrapping his arms around Clark, careful not to jostle him too much as he extracts his body from the coffin. He takes his time pulling Clark free and is mindful of his hand placement, as it would only take a slip of his hand to peel a portion of Clark’s scalp away from where Bruce had put a hole in his skull. He knows that the ship’s amniotic robots will have to peel away the tape holding Clark’s torso together and scrape out the blackened remains of his viscera before implanting the new ones. 

It’s not a job Bruce will envy.

He lifts Clark gingerly and steps into the fluid at the bottom of the chamber. The dark shapes of the robots become more distinct as they rise to the surface, grouping together to form a tangled net of strange robotic tentacles that support Clark’s body as Bruce lowers him into the fluid.

“Acknowledging presence of genetic material. Analyzing.”

They all stand in silence as the ship carries out its analysis. Barry shifts his weight nervously from foot to foot, exhaling a gust of air as Bruce steps back up onto the walkway. Victor and Diana are familiar with the way the Chamber works, but this is the first time Barry has seen the inside of an alien ship. He can be allowed a bit of discomfort.

“Warning: analysis reveals that the genetic material provided is un—”

“Extract the Registry of Citizens. All of it.”

As Clark’s body begins to sink below the surface of the fluid, Bruce becomes aware of motion from above; from the ceiling, a number of thin, root-like tendrils snake down, curling slowly around Clark’s body like a squid gripping its prey. 

“Advising. Once extracted, the genetic blueprints contained within the Registry of Citizens may be integrated with a living host of Kryptonian origin. Do you wish to reintegrate?”

Bruce’s mind immediately goes to the corpse of the mutated General Zod. _Kryptohominis_ , the ship had called it. Kryptonian and human both, now property of the US government, the product of Luthor’s ambitions and hubris. The only problem is that the monster is no longer living—but according to the ship, Clark is.

He makes eye contact with Diana, who lifts her chin almost imperceptibly.

“No, I don’t,” he says truthfully. Once the Registry is out of Clark’s DNA, Bruce’s interest in alien genetic experiments will cease, and Luthor’s melted wings will be a lesson that he won’t forget.

“Very well,” says the ship. “Preparing chrysalis and commencing installation.”

●

It takes just under two hours for the installation process to complete. Bruce and Diana remain in the chamber for the entire duration, and while Victor and Barry remain aboard the ship, they make themselves scarce soon after midnight, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of witnessing entire organ systems being implanted.

“A little too _Frankenstein_ for me,” Barry says, then wanders off to join Victor in exploring the sections of the ship that Bruce hadn’t stopped to examine.

On occasion, Bruce can hear the faint echo of the ship’s artificial voice as it guides them along. The Genesis Chamber is quiet in comparison, providing a peaceful sanctuary with soft ambient lighting.

On the other side of the chamber, just above the surface of the fluid, Clark’s body is housed in a sizeable bubble made of a glistening, semi-transparent membranous tissue. Bruce is too far away to clearly see what’s occurring within, but he can see dark shapes moving within the bubble, and the ship is kind enough to provide quiet updates each time a system’s function is restored. It uses terminology that Bruce is not wholly familiar with to report its progress, but with every major organ system that the ship restores to full function, Bruce’s optimism rises regardless of his level of understanding.

“Right lung installation successful,” the ship announces. He understands that much, and nods his approval as Diana takes a seat next to him on the scaffolding. Across the room, the chrysalis pulses before them, its veined surface shifting occasionally as the robots move within. 

“Have you considered what you’re going to say to him when he wakes up?”

“You mean aside from ‘I’m sorry you died and the world went to shit’?” Bruce says drily. Diana simply gives him a quizzical look, and after a moment he heaves a sigh. “It doesn’t feel like enough to apologize. Depending on what he remembers when he wakes up, I may not have to explain anything. I may have to explain it all, but… I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Left lung installation successful. Initiating bronchial dilation. Inflating alveolar cavities.” The chamber’s interior falls silent once more. Bruce watches another robot move beneath the surface of the bubble, and a quiet hiss escapes the chrysalis across the room as the ship says: “Alveolar function optimal. Independent respiration commencing.”

Bruce hears another long, quiet hiss, then another. The pace is slow and even, reminding Bruce of the sound of a mechanical ventilator.

“He’s breathing,” Diana says softly. There’s a hint of wonder in her voice. Despite being an ancient member of a highly secretive and powerful warrior race, Bruce would wager that she’s probably never seen anything like this, either. In fact, he’s glad that they’re able to share this experience; Diana had watched Clark spear himself on the creature’s spiked arm, too, and she deserves to see him restored to health as much as Bruce does.

Bruce is almost too tired to smile, but the sound of Clark’s breath is the most reassuring noise he’s heard in a long time. “Yeah, he is.”

They lapse into silence once more, listening to the gentle sound of Clark’s breathing as the robots continue their work. 

“When this is done,” he says quietly, “I’ll take him to his fiance’s apartment. She lives downtown. I think it will be better if he wakes up to a familiar face.”

Diana nods slowly. She knows who Lois Lane is, and she’s aware of the trouble that Bruce had run into while trying to plan for the days following Clark’s awakening, but until now she hasn’t asked many questions. If her faith in Bruce has wavered, she’s done a good job of concealing it. “And… you’ll be there too?”

“Long enough to make sure he’s okay, yeah.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Diana giving him a very pointed and inquiring look. “So when he finally wakes up, he’ll be with the woman he loves… and you.”

“It’s the best place I can think of. As easy as it would be to do it here, it would mean he’s waking up to something foreign, unfamiliar. He might jump to conclusions and assume that we’ve done something to him. I want to make sure that he’s comfortable. Make sure he knows he’s safe.”

“Heart installation successful,” the ship announces.

Diana smiles.

**II**

Lois Lane’s apartment is filled with the soft ticking of a clock.

Outside, the sky is still dark, and dawn is hours away. Most of the yellow light filtering into the apartment belongs to the street lights outside, so Bruce sits with his back to the windows, flipping through a worn copy of Plato’s _The Republic_ at a dining table that seems to have gotten more use as a makeshift desk; across the table, Lois’s laptop and a leather-bound journal lie half-opened and forgotten.

She’s in the bedroom with Clark now. It’s been a few hours since Bruce and Diana had arrived at the private back entrance of the building, but in the time that he’s been here, there has been no obvious activity or movement. Bruce can hear Lois speaking on occasion, her voice a low murmur through the wall, but he can’t make out words. She’d been kind enough to speak to Bruce and Diana for a few minutes after settling Clark in bed, but he’s not here to demand Lois’s attention—just to ensure that her presence is enough to bring Clark back.

Bruce eyes a wine glass sitting on a stack of books that fill most of the side table next to the couch; there’s another small pile beneath a scarf on the kitchen table, and on Bruce’s left there’s an entire bookshelf full of reading material, framed photos, foreign souvenirs, and more journals than Bruce can count.

Across from him is the kitchen. Various stainless steel tools and a small full-motion television are mounted on the wall to the left, and a small workstation beneath the display suggests that this section of the kitchen functions as a workshop. In the sink Bruce can see a small pile of unwashed dishes, and on the counter next to it is a half-full French Press and a lidded jar of water with lemon slices.

He can’t help but wonder how much of this space belonged to Clark. They must have shared it, of course, while Clark was working at the Planet. Bruce can almost imagine him sprawled out on the couch, or sitting where Bruce is now, listening through the window for signs of trouble, or perhaps skimming news headlines on a laptop. 

Bruce returns to reading. It’s been difficult to concentrate, knowing that Clark is in the next room, that at any moment he might wake. _If they abstained from injuring one another, then they might act together better._

It’s been years since he’s read this book. _The unjust will be the enemy of the gods, and the just will be their friend._

Maybe he’ll leave this out for Clark to read.

Eventually Bruce finds himself on the couch, _The Republic_ lying open on his chest but long since abandoned. He’d been on the verge of dozing off, his exhaustion from the past several days finally beginning to catch up to himself, but the sound of quiet footsteps in the kitchen pulls him back to consciousness, forcing him to blink his eyes open and reorient himself. His watch says it’s just after six. Dawn will be just starting to creep in, and will soon bring the sun with it.

Lois has her back to him, and Bruce can see a mug on the counter in front of her. When he sits up and places his book on the coffee table, she glances back, confirming that it is Bruce on her couch and not an intruder, and holds up the mug with a questioning look.

Bruce nods, and she turns back to the French Press.

He drags himself to the table once more, checking the window along the way to ensure that the skies are still clear and free of cloud cover. Within minutes Lois has returned to join him at the table, handing him a mug which he gratefully warms his hands on as Lois takes a seat across from him.

“The sun should be up soon,” he says quietly, watching as she closes her laptop and sets it aside with the journal. “You should try to get some sleep before it does. I can keep an eye on him if you need to sleep.”

Lois stares into the depths of her mug. “I appreciate the offer, but I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep until I know he’s okay.” 

They have that much in common. 

“You know, as strange as it sounds, it’s almost like he was never gone,” Lois says, breaking the silence at last. “Lying there, listening to him breathe… it doesn’t feel like it’s been a year.”

“It may feel that way for him,” Bruce says quietly. “He’ll probably have a lot of questions about what happened. It might take time for him to adjust to the world after being out of it for so long.”

“You don’t think he’ll remember what happened?”

Bruce doesn’t think anybody is capable of retaining memory once their brain has been turned to dust. “I’m not sure. If he remembers everything up until his final moments, he may be disoriented when he wakes up. You’ll have to be careful when you tell him what happened.”

Lois tilts her head, forehead wrinkling with concern. “You’re not going to tell him what happened? Don’t you think he’d want to hear it from you?”

“I don’t know what he’ll want to hear from me,” Bruce admits. His last real interaction with Clark had involved excessive monologuing on his part. If Clark remembers who he is, it’s not likely that he’ll want to hear anything from Bruce from quite some time. “I guess we’ll find out when he wakes up.”

“Of course,” Lois says. “But I have to ask… why are you doing this?”

Bruce wets his lips. She knows about Bruce’s plans to organize a team and lead a resistance, but she’s also a journalist. She as good at digging for information as Bruce is at concealing it.

“I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

Lois leans forward, resting her arms on the table. “You said that this is about an invasion. Saving the world. But saving the world isn’t your usual M.O., is it? And neither is bringing someone back from the dead.” She studies him for a long moment. “I know you’re not like Lex Luthor. Even breaking into the ship, using alien technology… it’s the same path, but it’s different for you. What you’re doing, it’s personal, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know Clark personally,” Bruce says. He can say that much without lying outright, and he wants to avoid telling Lois about what he’d done with Clark’s body. “I’m sure you’re aware he wasn’t a fan of my work.”

“But you’re still here,” Lois points out. “It must have taken weeks, maybe months to put this plan into motion, never mind the time it would take to find these people. Something tells me you don’t do things like this without a reason.”

Bruce smiles a little. “You know what’s at stake. It helps when the alternative is total annihilation.”

“Should I be expected to believe that you paid for Clark’s funeral because you thought the world was going to end?”

Lois smiles benignly, but there’s an unspoken challenge in the way she holds Bruce’s gaze. No wonder she’s a prize-winning reporter.

“You have your beliefs,” he says, breaking the silence as it begins to grow uncomfortable. “Maybe I believe what happened was an injustice. Does that fit my M.O. now?”

Lois clears her throat and looks down at her mug. If Bruce had his way, this is where the conversation would end. Even better, Clark would walk through the door and find them in the kitchen, and Bruce would be able to go home and sleep peacefully knowing that his work is complete.

“I know Clark didn’t approve of what Batman was doing in Gotham. But he only saw the parts of you that you let him see.”

“I’m not sure what you’re saying.” 

“I’m saying I know you have a history of trying to compensate people for their suffering,” Lois says softly. “Bruce Wayne has a very public… and, I’m sure, very private history of losing people. I’m saying I understand that there’s something personal about this, even if you don’t want people to know. But whatever your reasons, no matter how many people you brought on board, you still made the choice to bring him back.”

She continues to watch him expectantly. Under ordinary circumstances, Bruce might consider rewarding her for doing her homework, but her inquiry is veering into territory that Bruce hasn’t yet explored. He couldn’t answer if he wanted to. 

When it becomes apparent that Bruce isn’t going to reveal his motivations, Lois quietly pushes her chair out from the table and stands, leaving her half-full mug sitting across from Bruce as she makes her way back to the bedroom. She pauses in the doorway and spends a few seconds gazing inside, then looks back at Bruce.

“I know he’ll ask about you. I can’t give him all the answers, but I hope you’ll tell him the truth when he comes to you.”

•

As the horizon gradually grows lighter and the black of night begins to recede, Bruce returns to reading, but so close to sunrise he can’t keep his thoughts from turning to Clark; he reads the same sentence three times as he imagines how the sunrise will play out in the bedroom, golden sunlight falling over Clark’s skin, his eyes fluttering open, his lips finally parting as he takes a breath and forms his first words.

 _No man would keep his hands off of what was not his own_ —

Idly, Bruce imagines Lois’s fingers brushing over Clark’s cheek while she waits, remembering the curve of his jaw, the gentle slope of his throat. Places that Bruce has touched. He’s seen all of the parts of Clark’s body that Lois has seen, and numerous parts that she hasn’t. The opportunity had been his and he’d taken it, had taken Clark apart piece by piece. It hadn’t been a just act, and yet he would never have known the extent of Clark’s injuries. If he hadn’t examined Clark so thoroughly, he would never have thought twice about pronouncing him dead and leaving him to rot in a hole in Kansas.

_—injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice—_

Bruce places _The Republic_ on the table and scrubs his hands over his face.

•

The quiet extends for a long while after sunrise. Like before, Bruce can hear Lois murmuring, her voice just low enough to be unintelligible, but nearly half an hour passes before anything of note happens.

The bed isn’t within Bruce’s line of sight, but he can hear the soft creak of the mattress spring. He thinks nothing of it until he hears Lois’s voice again, now louder than before.

Muffled by the wall, the word is still quiet, but distinct: “Clark.”

Bruce stares at a point in the doorway, trying to focus on the voices within the room. He’s glad now for the silence in the apartment, because without it, he wouldn’t be able to hear the whisper-quiet sound of a man’s voice.

“Lo?”

It strikes Bruce suddenly that Clark should sound different. He remembers the same soot-black residue in the back of Clark’s throat, like someone had held a match to his oropharynx and forced him to swallow it. Surely the ship had mended that, too, but it’s been over a year since Clark has spoken aloud.

As Bruce trains his hearing on the bedroom, he can hear a sound; he can’t discern whether it’s laughter or sobbing, and it quiets quickly, becoming a subdued sound that Bruce can’t pin on either Clark or Lois. Whatever reaction it is, whoever it belongs to, Bruce is certain that it’s not a reaction of sorrow, but of joy. 

The relief hits Bruce like a tidal wave. He exhales and settles back in his chair, closing his eyes for just a moment while he mentally composes the message of success that he’ll send to his new teammates. 

As he pushes himself carefully out of his chair, reaching for his phone with a triumphant message held clearly in his mind, he realizes that the sounds in the bedroom have come to a stop.

“Clark, wait.” 

The mattress creaks again. This time Bruce can hear the sound of bare feet on the floor, cautious footsteps approaching the open doors.

“There’s someone in the apartment.”

Bruce straightens up slowly, climbing to his feet as Clark steps into the apartment proper for the first time.

“Bruce,” he says.

Lois steps out from behind him, sliding a placating hand down his arm; he’s no longer in his funeral suit, but is dressed instead in a plain shirt and sweatpants, something she must have done at some point during the night to make him as comfortable as possible. “It’s okay, Clark, I knew he was here. He was waiting with me.”

Clark tilts his head, staring at Bruce as if his presence is a struggle to fully comprehend. He recognizes Bruce, at least, but he doesn’t look particularly pleased to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way out the door,” Bruce assures him, moving carefully around the table as he slips his phone back in his pocket. “I’ll let you have your priv—” 

It takes less than a second for Clark to close the space between them, and suddenly Clark’s hand is around Bruce’s throat, his fingers like a vice grip on either side of Bruce’s jaw.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

He leans in close, and it strikes Bruce that until he’d examined Clark in the harsh artificial lighting of his laboratory, he had never paid attention to the colour of his eyes. He’d always expected Superman’s eyes to be a perfect shade of blue, a precise mimicry of human appearance—and he’d been wrong, of course. Left eye segmental heterochromia, an imperfection staining a portion of his iris brown. They’re red and glassy now, narrowed in anger, but his voice is low and horrifyingly calm.

Before Bruce can fully process the familiarity of this moment, Clark’s lip curls, and suddenly Bruce is flying.

The sound of glass shattering and wood splintering barely registers to Bruce as he crashes through both the apartment door and the banister outside it. Opposite the door is a brick wall that lines the staircase, and it’s the first solid surface to withstand the force of Bruce’s body hitting it; as he falls to the floor, breathless from the force of the impact, the brick and drywall crumble around him, sending up a cloud of dust that momentarily obscures his vision.

Clark is standing before him when he glances up, and although he raises an arm to shield himself from the hand reaching for him a second time, it’s a flimsy defense in the face of Clark’s rage. With a flick of Clark’s wrist Bruce goes tumbling down the flight of stairs, landing in a heap at the bottom as small bits of wood and brick clatter down the staircase to join him. 

It hurts like hell. There’s glass buried in his shoulder and pain lancing up his spine, but it’s hard to determine whether anything is broken; he grits his teeth and manages to pull himself upright in time to see Clark slowly descending the stairs, his gaze fixed on Bruce as he steps over broken shards of glass and brick.

Bruce can hear Lois. She’s still at the top of the stairs, and as he blinks and clears his vision he can see the look of horror on her face. “Clark, you need to let him go, he didn’t do anything, he’s been helping you—”

“Stay back, Lo,” Clark says without looking away. He doesn’t even wait for Bruce to climb to his feet—he fists a hand in the front of Bruce’s shirt, lifts him until his feet leave the ground, and slams him against the wall.

Teeth gritted in pain, Bruce tenses and braces for another impact—there’s another flight of stairs directly to his left that leads down to the foyer, where Bruce is likely about to travel through the glass and into the street—but Clark simply drags him down the wall to eye level and holds him in place, his teeth bared in an expression of barely-contained rage.

“I _remember_ ,” Clark growls, leaning in so close that his breath washes over Bruce’s face. “If you come near this building again…”

A hand curls over Clark’s shoulder. Lois has joined them at the bottom of the stairs, and she inserts herself into the space between them with her back to Bruce. “Clark! Clark, stop. He’s not hurting anybody. Please.”

Clark’s gaze slips away from Bruce’s face. Lois isn’t paying any attention to Bruce, and it’s obvious that she’s not trying to check him for injuries—she’s distracting Clark, and it seems to be working.

His face softens immediately as he turns to her, and after a moment, his grip on Bruce’s shirt loosens.

“Let’s go,” she says softly, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Clark, let’s just go.”

For a moment, Clark’s gaze flits back to Bruce. He can feel the glass digging into his shoulder and it hurts to simply hold his head upright, but he holds Clark’s gaze until Clark says, “Leave.”

Bruce nods wordlessly.

As Clark steps back, Lois takes him by the hand and begins to guide him up the stairs. She glances down at Bruce once Clark reaches the top of the staircase; from here, Bruce can see that her eyes are still red, too, despite the apologetic look that she gives him before leading Clark through the remains of their apartment door. 

As Bruce sags against the wall, gritting his teeth against the pain in his back, his phone is already halfway to his ear. It appears to have survived the encounter, but he’s not sure how many of his bones can say the same.

“Alfred,” he grunts as the audible ringing ceases. His clothes are covered in dust and he can hear the faint crunch of glass and brick beneath his shoes as he takes a tentative step away from the wall. “I need you to—arrange a pickup. I need to get out of the city.”

“Already done,” Alfred replies. “Are you all right, Bruce? Did something happen?”

Bruce lets out a slow, steadying breath, bracing himself on the banister as he begins to make his way down the last flight of stairs. He’ll need to exit through the back door, and he’ll have to be smart about it. Being thrown through a door and slammed against a wall is one of the least subtle things Bruce has managed to accomplish at such an early hour. “I’ll explain when I get there.”

As he limps through the ground floor hallway, a door swings open, revealing a curious tenant who watches as he goes by. Bruce puts his head down and walks a bit faster.

“Is Master Kent...?”

“Yeah,” Bruce says gruffly. There are voices in the hallway behind him now, but the back door is within sight. All he needs to do is get out. “He’s back. Clark’s back.”

**III**

After a handful of x-rays and a trip to one of Bruce’s most trusted medical advisors, the next logical step is to prepare for a vacation.

As a general rule, Bruce tends not to use his free time for frivolous things. He’s had to call out of work in the past for injuries, though only when absolutely necessary, and his vacations typically consist of spending his time underground and keeping physical activity to an absolute minimum to facilitate the healing of broken bones or torn muscle. Unlike Bruce Wayne, the Bat isn’t quite fortunate enough to have designated vacation time, so the few times that Bruce has needed to leave town for any length of time have been spent hoping for crime to take a night off.

This time, however, there’s no reason for him to make excuses for not taking time off. He has good reason for it now—multiple cracked ribs, numerous contusions on his back, and a mild concussion, though Bruce hardly counts that as an injury at this stage—all of which will keep him from his exercise and will require weeks of healing that the Bat simply won’t get on the streets.

As for the situation with Clark, there’s little that Bruce can do. Lurking around Metropolis and keeping him under surveillance won’t make him any more friendly toward Bruce. Now that Clark is very much alive, Bruce finally afford to take some time off and put distance between himself and his usual activities.

He decides on Iceland. This time of year is not especially popular with tourists, as Iceland’s winter creates seasonal restrictions for people looking to explore the island. Luckily, isolation will almost certainly benefit Bruce while he heals, but Iceland is also his best lead on Arthur Curry, the final meta-human that Luthor had inadvertently introduced Bruce to. 

Finding and identifying Arthur would be markedly more difficult without Waller’s file. Bruce knows where Arthur was born, who he was born to, and that he belongs to the not-so-mythical city of Atlantis, but that information is the extent of Waller’s precious intel. Luthor’s file on _meta_human_alpha_AQ_ contains little more than what Bruce has managed to dig up with targeted internet searches, which includes dubiously relevant cryptid sightings and Loch Ness Monster-style reports of sea-dwelling merpeople. 

The most credible sources, while unlikely to be reliable in any capacity, include a small number of posts on forums and closed message boards from people who claim to know about the fabled underwater continent of Atlantis. 

Diana is infinitely more helpful now that she trusts Bruce enough to share what she knows about the Atlanteans, but her information about Arthur is as limited as Bruce’s, and it’s not enough to give any information as to his whereabouts. 

When Victor offers to help, Bruce reminds him that he has enough on his plate with S.T.A.R. Labs. In Bruce’s absence Victor will have to monitor both Clark and the mother box, which will be no minor feat if another parademon decides to come searching for it.

It takes some effort to dig up more information on Arthur Curry, but while Bruce is busy ensuring that he’ll be physically capable of even making the trip, Diana manages to find a lead that sounds semi-credible; a day before his departure, Bruce receives an email linking to a tourist’s blog detailing a vacation in Iceland. It showcases various local foods and lodgings on a trip that takes them through a small fishing village on the northwest coast, and in the post the author recounts a story that reads like a typical legend, a local tale about a small community able to survive with the help of a guardian figure. 

The more Bruce reads, the more he decides that this mysterious and powerful benefactor sounds like a patron saint of saltwater fish and tidal events.

He continues reading the review, scanning it for further mention of the otherworldly provider, but it’s not until he reaches a set of photos at the end that his skepticism is put to the test. Ignoring the twinge in his back as he leans forward, Bruce inspects a mural that depicts a man in the water with a fish grasped triumphantly in one hand. It’s crudely illustrated, but the unmistakable shape of a fortress surrounds a single box at the bottom of the ocean floor; above the water’s surface, two other fortress-protected boxes are flanked by a set of men and women.

In the body of the email, Diana has written a single sentence:

_If you’re looking to catch a fish, it helps to know where they swim._

Bruce returns to the blog, saves the photo, and begins to type a thank-you note.

●

Egilsstaðir, the largest town in eastern Iceland, is perhaps the smallest town Bruce has ever been to with an international airport. The brochures Bruce had thumbed through on the flight had revealed few non-landscape-based points of interest in the area, but Bruce isn’t planning to stay and take in the sights.

With a hiking pack slung carefully across his back, he catches a ride inland to the trail-scarred national forest of Hallormsstaður. Most of what he’ll need to survive in the wilderness is already in his bag, but he rents a massive black draft cross named Lukka from the stables and purchases a number of other supplies—mostly food and a few basic essentials to supplement what he’d brought with him from Gotham, namely a healthy supply of painkillers—before he turns southwest and begins his journey.

Alongside the Lagarfljót lake, Bruce’s view of the clear glacier water slowly becomes obscured as the trail takes him and his new companion through a landscape thick with snow-frosted trees and alpine vegetation. Although he tries to keep some distance between himself and the main roads, he continues to follow the river as it narrows and winds to the south, stopping a number of times along the way to drink from the river and down some ibuprofen to ensure that riding on horseback doesn’t leave him completely unable to travel.

By the time he makes it to his pre-booked accomodations at the Wilderness Centre and hitches Lukka up for the night, Bruce feels as if he’s aged a decade and discovered more waterfalls, canyons, and abandoned farms than anybody in Gotham has ever dreamed of seeing. He checks in briefly with Alfred to provide reassurance that the wilderness hasn’t yet claimed him, and is reassured in turn that nothing has gone terribly wrong with Clark, Gotham, or any of his business ventures in the single day he’s spent outside of the country. 

Not that he was worried, of course.

After taking another dose of painkillers with his meal, Bruce finally crawls carefully into bed and sleeps peacefully through the night. In the morning his body aches, but the next several days he spends at the Wilderness Centre are less strenuous and less painful. Bruce would even go so far as to call them enjoyable.

With Lukka by his side, he ventures out into the area, exploring his surroundings on foot and meandering along an old pack horse trail in the evenings.

It’s the first time Bruce has been alone in years, and it doesn’t bother him in the least.

•

The sky is still dark and the stars shine brightly in the sky on the morning Bruce saddles up and sets off for Vatnajökull National Park. The snow and ice make the terrain especially treacherous this time of year, and he’s been warned numerous times about the many seasonal road closures that restrict traffic to many of the country’s vehicle-accessible attractions. Bruce has spent enough time hiking in the wilderness in his lifetime to know that he could probably make the trek on his own with a good pair of snowshoes, but the terrain forces him to rely on sure-footed Lukka.

Riding on horseback instead of traveling in a sturdy vehicle slows his travel and makes his back ache after a few short hours, but Bruce finds himself enjoying the companionship. Without Alfred in his ear and with human activity all but non-existent on smaller country roads, it’s nice to have somebody to talk to. Lukka doesn’t seem to mind whether Bruce travels on foot or not, doesn’t respond snidely to his roadside commentary, and doesn’t complain about his complaints—most of which concern Clark, and his regret that they’d parted on less-than-amicable terms.

“It’s probably better to give him time to cool off,” Bruce muses one afternoon. “I don’t blame him for being angry, but there was something about the way he spoke…”

Lukka hardly gives him so much as a snort in response.

•

There are more waterfalls yet along the way, and as Bruce draws nearer to Laugarfell, he comes across a herd of reindeer roaming through the wilderness near a natural spring. The surrounding landscape is vast, and the road leads Bruce past breathtaking natural formations of volcanic rock, immense glacier canyons, and the Ódáðahraun desert, which boasts near-impassable lava fields, shield volcanoes, and a vast active volcanic zone north of the massive Vatnajökull ice cap.

It feels strange to travel without a schedule or a guide. Bruce takes photographs to send to Alfred to chronicle his journey, but for the first time he isn’t compiling information for research. It feels good to be a tourist in this land, even with the knowledge that his long journey will ultimately lead him to the final meta-human on his list. Even in winter, Iceland has a lot to offer, and Bruce is glad to cast aside the majority of his concerns and worries to focus on himself.

He finds himself in the snow-dusted foothills of Mt. Snæfell, grateful to spend the night in a small hotel near the base of the mountain while a minor storm blows by; for the next several days Bruce enjoys modest meals with the owners, sharing stories of his trip and discussing other attractions and local areas to visit before he leaves. He learns that many of the largest cities in the United Kingdom are less than a hundred miles away from the mountain’s peak, and while he has no intention of scaling the mountain, he promises to keep an eye out for far-off British landmarks on his journey.

He spends nearly a week in the foothills. It’s a peaceful week, one of the best Bruce has had in recent memory, but it doesn’t negate his purpose here. With the sun setting earlier each day, he makes sure to set off early, and spends the following night warming himself and Lukka in front of a small campfire that melts slowly through the newly-fallen snow.

He’s not lonely by any means, but as the night goes on the thought of home creeps into Bruce’s mind like a fall frost. As he reclines against his hiking pack and watches the night sky slowly rotate overhead, a river of blue begins to twist through the air, outlining the mountain’s dark peak against lazy waves of shifting colour. 

It’s a beautiful sight; the aurora lights up the landscape around him and reflects off the snow, giving the hills a soft blue tint that gradually shifts into a vibrant green.

The aurora takes up most of the night sky in an ethereal display, and despite Bruce’s greatest efforts not to associate this particular colour with anything Kryptonian, his mind turns to Clark. 

By now, Lois has probably told Clark about Bruce’s plan to unite a group of meta-humans, and it’s likely that he now knows that, like Luthor, Bruce had utilized the ship to bring him back. 

It doesn’t bother him. It would have been preferable to tell Clark about the plan in person, but Bruce’s public absence creates a perfect opportunity for Clark to consider whether he has a place among them without the pressure of Bruce being there to wait for an answer. It’s not likely that Clark will want to speak with him until he gets back, but like Lois, he’s a journalist. If he wants to find Bruce, he will.

•

In a small private hut on the northern shore of lake Mývatn, Bruce tosses a handful of pamphlets on a chair and pulls on a second sweater, trying to preserve the last of the warmth from his long and well-deserved shower at the Hlíð guesthouse.

Though riding too long on horseback still leaves him stiff after weeks of travel, he can tell that his injuries are slowly beginning to heal. He’s still in the process of making his way north, and the day’s trip had taken him past the Dimmuborgir lava formations, the Mývatn nature baths, and the Grjótagjá cave with its geothermal spring to his current residence in the village of Reykjahlíð. It feels as if he and Lukka have spent equal time resting and traveling along the way, but every stop brings a new wonder for Bruce to marvel at, and Bruce isn’t in a hurry.

Luckily, he seems to have accidentally found a pleasantly scenic area to amble around for the next few days. This time of year, the nearby Krafla lava fields are blanketed with snow, concealing most of the volcanic terrain and pseudo-craters surrounding the lake. The snow is still fresh from a recent storm but it’s not quite deep enough to provide insulation from the cold, nor is it fully successful at masking the scent of sulphur that normally blankets the region. His lodgings by the lake aren’t far from the main guesthouse, which means a hot bowl of mountain lamb soup is never far away. 

The cold can easily be dealt with, but he’ll have to get used to the smell.

With the stew warming his belly, another handful of ibuprofen dulling the ache from the day’s ride, and a view of the clear night sky from the window at the front of the room, Bruce is satisfied with the day’s progress. He slips beneath the thick blankets and makes himself comfortable on the small bed, already looking forward to falling asleep watching the stars crawl across his window.

Despite his fondness for Gotham’s smoggy atmosphere, the vastness of the night sky beyond the window reminds him of home; the view from inside the city itself is nothing spectacular, as anyone in Gotham can attest to, but Bruce’s lakeside home gives him a nighttime view to rival that of any rural stargazing site, far away from the lights and the bustle of the city. Living in a glass house comes with a certain comfort, too. He has a view of the lake and the full night sky from almost anywhere in his home, yet it’s become apparent that even the most beautiful nights in Gotham pale in comparison to a night in Iceland when the moon is bright and the auroras are in full bloom.

It’s a shame that there are no auroras in Gotham, Bruce thinks, his gaze fixed on the shimmering lights beyond the window. Beyond the gaudy neon lights, nothing shines in the darkness but a bat-shaped signal—and far below the ground, a long, green spearhead.

•

Stepping onto the small porch built extending a few feet from the front of the hut, Bruce is greeted with a view of the unfrozen Mývatn lake and the craggy, snow-covered landscape that stretches toward the water’s edge. A storm must have snuck up during the night, as Bruce realizes that it’s snowing again; the sky overhead is thick with clouds and beyond the porch overhang snowflakes spiral calmly downward, their path undisturbed by wind. The air is calm for this time of night, and the falling snow seems to muffle all noise around the hut—except for the sound of the hut’s front door closing behind him, and the soft, wistful sigh that pulls Bruce’s attention away from the view and toward his unexpected guest.

“I imagine this much snow is exciting to someone who grew up in the midwest.”

“We get snow in Kansas. It’s nothing special.”

Bruce takes a moment to brush a thin layer of snow from one of the small wooden chairs on the porch, then lowers himself into it. “You know, some people actually find it quite peaceful.”

“Try asking someone caught in an avalanche,” Clark says. Bruce shifts in his seat to give him room to squeeze between the table and the porch railing, an invitation to sit at the table and watch the snow fall, but Clark steps off of the porch instead, a faint frown crossing his face as he takes in the lake and surrounding landscape. 

“I dunno. Maybe it looks better when it covers everything, but even after a storm, the snow here won’t ever be perfectly smooth.” He turns his head, indicating the land around them. “No matter how perfect the snow looks at first, the rock always shows through.”

“Half of Iceland is made of active volcanic zones,” Bruce reminds him. It seems important that Clark remember why the earth has cracked open, why the long, jagged lines in the snow’s surface have melted away to reveal the black volcanic rock beneath.

Clark has no idea what he’s talking about. He can’t expect it to look perfect. This is just the way things are.

“The land is shaped by volcanic events,” Bruce continues. “It doesn’t drive people away. The tourists know about the lava flows, the magma chambers. It’s the reason there are hot springs and craters. It’s why people come here.”

Clark appears to contemplate that for a moment. Something in the distance must have caught his attention, something too far away for Bruce to see. 

While Clark reflects on his words, Bruce climbs to his feet and stands near the edge of the porch. Clark’s wearing his suit tonight, but the flakes of snow that have fallen onto his shoulders haven’t yet melted. Bruce has a fleeting thought—his skin and muscle like insulation, concealing the truth of the inferno raging beneath, blackened only where the flame broke through—and just as quickly, the thought is gone, and all Bruce can remember is the cool smoothness of Clark’s skin.

“Sometimes beautiful things can still be terrible.” Clark says. He turns toward Bruce, and for the first time the tear in the fabric becomes obvious. The snowflakes glitter like stars as they fall in front of the dark hole in his chest. “What about you? Are you here for the beauty, or the destruction that caused it?”

Bruce remembers the Genesis Chamber, filled with the shriveled remnants of stalks that had once carried thousands of Kryptonians and amniotic fluid tinted with alien waste; he can only picture how the Kryptonian creature had looked as it clawed its way out of the depths of the chamber, wiping away the remnants of its own membranous chrysalis, but he knows precisely how Clark had looked lying on his table, his torso split open from sternum to pubis. 

“You can’t always make a beautiful thing from a destructive act.” 

“And you can’t stop beautiful things from being destroyed,” Clark says simply, unaware that the wound in his chest is now glowing faintly from within, pulsing with the same gentle green as the aurora and the kryptonite gas. The longer Bruce watches, the brighter it glows, illuminating both the depths of Clark’s chest cavity and the smoke beginning to curl out of the hole and into the night air. 

Beautiful. Ethereal. Destructive.

“Are you going to tell me that I shouldn’t worry about things I can’t control?”

Clark laughs. “Something tells me you wouldn’t listen if I did.” As he exhales, the green light flares brightly in his chest, sending a burst of sparks into the air. The fire is beginning to spread, and if Clark notices the flames licking at the blackened fabric of his suit, he gives no indication of it.

It’s an alarming sight, but Bruce has seen Clark surrounded by fire before. Clark always comes away unharmed.

“Wait,” he says, taking a hesitant step off the porch. He opens his mouth to warn Clark about the fire, but the baffling lack of alarm Clark’s face stops him. Why should he be worried if Clark isn’t? “There’s… something you should know about what happened.”

Bruce reaches for the fire, intent on smothering it with his palm—and before his eyes, Clark bursts into flames.

Bruce throws an arm over his face, shielding himself from the sudden inferno.

“No!” 

The blaze is almost blindingly bright, but it quickly becomes obvious that there is no heat coming off of the flames; even with his forearm as a barrier Bruce can see the green through his eyelids, and yet it feels as if the fire is contained only to Clark, who has gone worryingly silent.

When the fire dies down behind Bruce’s eyelids, he opens his eyes to find that the fireball that had enveloped Clark has disappeared, and it appears to have taken Clark with it. In his place stands a steaming, charred, featureless figure as black as the volcanic rock around them, and it’s with horror that Bruce notices the soft green glow seeping from the cracks in its chest, pulsing like a heartbeat that grows weaker, dimming the light until it extinguishes altogether.

The figure heaves a sigh, steam hissing from the fissure in its face where its mouth once was, and goes still.

“Clark,” Bruce breathes, hand outstretched once more. He presses his palm against its chest, causing the charred flesh to crack and crumble beneath his fingertips, like—

The scorched remains of Clark and the landscape around him melts into darkness as Bruce sits upright, his chest heaving as his eyes adjust to the dark interior of his cabin. He rubs his palms against his eyes, trying to force the imprint of the kryptonite inferno out of his mind, but the soft green glow seems to persist.

Is he still…?

Outside the cabin, reflecting off the calm surface of the Mývatn lake, a sea of green ripples gently through the air.

**IV**

On the Strandir coast, the seaside village of Djúpavík seems so small and remote a settlement that Bruce initially wonders if his journey has led him astray. The 643 is closed to traffic this time of year, but it’s easy to follow the steep cliffside on horseback, and Lukka is well-equipped to handle the desolate landscape filled with sheep, fjords, and snow-capped hills. It takes hours of following the jagged cliffs, but as he dismounts his horse near the Djúpavíkurfoss waterfall and pushes up his goggles, Bruce recognizes the quaint village far below from the post Diana had discovered.

He’s surprised by its size more than anything; even his time spend in sequestered mountain villages in Thailand and Japan hadn’t prepared him for the handful of weathered houses next to the aged remains of a building that was once the most technologically advanced of its time. It was once a herring processing factory, he knows from research, a relic of a dying industry, yet the owners of the Djúpavík Hotel still provide tours of the dilapidated factory and provide lodgings for travelers in a building repurposed from the old women’s quarters.

Despite the amenities it offers, the village is hardly a bustling metropolis. It’s more of a tourist destination, isolated enough to keep only a few residents year-round. As Bruce makes his way down to the handful of houses clustered around the shore of the Greenland Sea, he can’t help but wonder what he’ll do if he’s wrong. Arthur Curry could be a ghost for all he knows, and Bruce may have spent several weeks traveling to the furthest reaches of Iceland for nothing—but he’s nothing if not optimistic. In a village where the fishing industry is all but obsolete, the legend of the man who comes from the sea is enough to inspire hope in the few residents who live here full-time, and it’s enough to inspire hope in Bruce, too.

The old factory appears to serve as the village’s social hub, so it’s the first place he goes. Inside, Bruce finds a small crowd—likely the entirety of the village, by the looks of it—gathered for a meeting of some sort, and as the locals part to make way for him he finds a man standing at the front of the room, with the same long hair and beard as the man in the hand-painted mural on the wall.

Arthur Curry looks every bit as imposing as he does in his photograph. Bruce’s immediate impression is that of a feral animal; Arthur’s hair is long and wavy, his shoulders as broad as Bruce’s own, and on his neck Bruce can see thick black stripes painted on his skin that curve over his throat and dip beneath the collar of his sweater. 

When his gaze lands on Bruce, the room goes quiet.

•

It takes less than a minute of walking along the water’s edge with Arthur before Bruce gets the distinct impression that he is not someone who takes kindly to strangers asking questions. He seems like the type who is accustomed to being able to frighten strangers before they can engage in potentially revealing or menial conversations, which probably means he isn’t going to like Bruce very much.

“Let me get this straight, Bruce Wayne,” he rasps, walking with his hands jammed in his pockets. He’d downed a few fingers of whiskey and tossed the bottle aside as they’d left the factory, likely expecting Bruce to comment on it. “You came all this way to ask me to go back to your shitty town so I can join your circus because you think the world’s gonna end?”

“I’m offering you good money to come back to my shitty city and help us prepare for an invasion,” Bruce amends. “That drawing on the wall, those boxes? Your people will know who’s coming for them. Your people fought to keep those safe for centuries, and they’ll be in danger if w—”

“Those people are not my people,” Arthur says firmly, stepping in front of Bruce to cut off both his path and his sentence. His eyes are narrowed, his irises the colour of the glaciers in the distance, and he’s so close that Bruce can smell the whiskey on him. “I don’t know what they do down there, I don’t give a fuck about your boxes and drawings, I don’t give a fuck about your alien problems. It’s none of my business.”

He turns on his heel and begins walking again. Bruce keeps pace with him, unwilling to let Arthur intimidate him into backing down. “That’s fine. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you work better alone, don’t you?”

“You’re damn right I do,” Arthur growls.

“Good. I work better alone too. Funny thing is, Superman worked alone, just like us, and when something came up that couldn’t be handled alone, he died fighting next to me.”

For a moment, Arthur seems unsure of what to say. 

“Yeah, I heard he went down. Didn’t realize you were there with him.”

“It was a pretty shitty night,” Bruce allows.

Arthur makes an amused sound, eyeing Bruce speculatively. “Well, sounds like working together didn’t work out so good for him. Maybe it’ll work if you keep trying, but I’m out.”

Bruce slows enough to fall a step behind Arthur, who doesn’t seem to notice as Bruce deftly slips a tracker into the inside of the hood of his jacket. “We didn’t spend enough time together to take down the thing that killed him. But if we had more people, if we got to know each other and worked as a team…”

He comes to a stop as they arrive at a rocky shore on the far end of the village. Arthur, seemingly deaf to his plea, steps down toward the water’s edge and shrugs off his bugged jacket. By now a few of the villagers from the factory meeting have followed them outside, curious about their exchange, but Bruce pays them no mind.

“He’s back.”

Arthur pauses partway through pulling his sweater off.

“Who? The thing that killed Superman?”

“No,” Bruce says. “Superman.”

Arthur’s sweater hits the shore. He’s now completely nude from the waist up, and Bruce can see that some of his tattoos dip below the waist of his jeans. “What do you mean, he’s back?”

“I mean he’s not dead. He’s recovering. Wasn’t happy to see me, but he’s alive.”

Although most of Arthur’s expressions have been some variation of a scowl until this point, the news appears to take him by surprise. “You’re serious? You found a way to do that?” 

Bruce nods. 

“That’s fucked up, Bruce Wayne,” Arthur says, lowering his voice until it feels more like a conversation rather than a confrontation. “Shit, no wonder he wasn’t happy to see you. You can’t just bring someone back from the dead and expect shit to be okay.”

“Maybe not. The details aren’t really important,” Bruce says lightly. “What’s important is that he’s alive. I’m going to make him the same offer I’m making you.”

A larger crowd has gathered around Bruce. He can feel their eyes on him, though he’s not sure why they would focus on him and not the fabled and potentially alcoholic Aquaman standing before them.

“Alright,” Arthur says, “and what makes you think he’ll want to join you? He died once, I’m betting he’s not gonna feel like doing that again. Who else do you have in this party, anyway? Superman, a robot...”

“A _cyborg_ whose body is made from a mother box, an Amazon warrior, a man who moves faster than the speed of light… Superman… and me.”

Arthur stares at him for a long moment, then snorts and kneels down to unlace his boots. “Yeah, you guys are gonna get slaughtered.”

It feels as if every layer he removes builds another wall between them. At this point, it’s glaringly obvious that he has some interest in Superman, and his feigned disinterest is simply an attempt at driving a wedge between himself and the possibility of working with a team. It’s kind of sad to think about. Arthur can’t have made many friends in his lifetime, and he doesn’t seem to realize that Bruce is offering him the chance to surround himself with others who understand what it’s like to be different.

Bruce steps closer down the shore. One of Arthur’s boots lands near him as he kicks it off. “You may not see it now, but you have a place with us.”

“I don’t have a place with anyone,” Arthur mutters.

“You do. These people, Superman, the others—we’re all different too. Not like the rest of the world. That’s why we _need_ to stand together. I don’t know your history, but I know our history. We beat this before, the Atlanteans, the Amazons, mankind… the last time Steppenwolf tried to take over the planet, we won. We did it by working together, and we can do it again.” 

Arthur stops short of removing his jeans and begins to wade out into the water. He stops for just a moment, and without glancing back, says, “You should go back to working alone. Don’t let anyone else get hurt because they thought they could count on you.”

With that, he dives headfirst into the water and is gone.

•

Bruce spends the night in Djúpavík Hotel. In the morning, he returns to the shore, hoping to discover that Arthur had returned for his clothing in the night. To his disappointment, the haphazard articles of clothing are are still lying on the ground next to the rusted remains of the ship that had once served as factory staff quarters, the tracker still in place inside the jacket hood.

It’s time to leave. It will be impossible to track Arthur down now, and the local villagers don’t need any more interference from Bruce.

Once Alfred has been notified, Bruce has several hours of free time to spend reflecting on his failure. He eats breakfast at the hotel and gathers his belongings and supplies. It’s been nearly six weeks since his arrival in Egilsstaðir—nearly six weeks without word of Steppenwolf or parademons, without the Batsuit, without Alfred in his ear. His body is healing, but the rest of the world hasn’t ceased to exist just because he’s been trekking across Iceland. It must be nearly Christmas now.

Through the window, Bruce can see Lukka, who’s been hitched outside while he prepares to leave. He won’t have the time to escort her back to Hallormsstaður, but there are other horses in the village, a stable where she’ll be looked after, and he still has a few hours left before a plane will arrive to take him back to Gotham.

If he can’t spend time conversing with Arthur, he can at least spend the last of his time in Iceland with the one local he did manage to befriend.

●

The click of Diana’s shoes echoes throughout the hangar. Bruce doesn’t glance in her direction until she takes a seat next to him, but he quickly returns his gaze to the computer monitor and the file on parademon activity that she’s been updating in his absence.

“You look well-rested,” she says kindly. “How are you feeling?”

Bruce knows precisely what he looks like. Well-rested is not a phrase he would ever use to describe himself, but he does look better now than when he’d left. 

“Better,” he says, offering Diana a half-hearted smile. “No flying monkeys in Iceland. Nobody to throw me around except my horse.” 

Diana offers him a brief smile in return, but her attention, like Bruce’s, is drawn to the screen.

“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

Bruce isn’t sure precisely how many parademons need to be discovered buzzing around before they can consider it an invasion, but there’s an uncomfortable feeling in his stomach that tells him it won’t be long before the rest of the world catches on. Iceland may no longer be a safe haven for Arthur, but soon the safety of the world may be threatened, and it’s hard to say how much time they have. 

“It’s manageable. You need to give yourself more time,” Diana says.

He does. But he can’t afford it, and Diana knows that too. “Looks like they didn’t give you much trouble while I was gone.”

“They tried,” Diana says lightly, offering no further explanation. She tilts her head at him, expectant. “So? How was your trip?”

Bruce clears his throat. “Good. I found Arthur. Talked to him long enough to get a read on him. You could say it was a productive meeting.”

“Really. So he said he’ll fight with us?”

Diana gives the screen another cursory glance as Bruce plays a clip of a metallic weapon firing at a parademon. The creature shrieks and evaporates in a burst of light and blue smoke. The weapon is unfamiliar, but he recognizes the familiar metallic hand that it transforms into before the short clip ends. Though it’s somewhat comforting to know that Victor is more versatile than expected, the fact that there are at least four similar videos from the past two weeks is a major concern to the safety of the city.

“More or less,” Bruce says distractedly. He can still see Arthur standing in the shallow waters of the Greenland Sea, wearing nothing but his jeans and a devil-may-care attitude. _Don’t let anyone else get hurt._

“Is that more ‘more’, or more ‘less’?”

Apparently his enthusiasm isn’t convincing enough. “Probably more less.”

“He said no,” Diana guesses.

Bruce closes the window with a click and sighs. Diana doesn’t seem as disappointed as Bruce feels, but the sole reason Bruce had gone to Iceland was to recruit Arthur. He’d expected to at least pique Arthur’s curiosity by appealing to his sense of belonging, but in living up to his name, Arthur has proven to be a difficult fish to net.

“He had a few colourful thoughts about the proposal. Wouldn’t take the bait when I told him about Clark. Even slipped my tracker. It’s probably safe to assume we won’t find him so easily next time.”

“At least you tried,” Diana says. 

Bruce grimaces. Just trying isn’t good enough anymore.

“I take it Clark didn’t drop off his resume while I was gone.”

Diana taps a finger on the desk. “Alfred didn’t tell you?”

Bruce swivels in his chair. Alfred hadn’t mentioned Clark at all, but he hadn’t been the one in charge of keeping an eye on him. Still, if Clark had decided to visit, that’s information that Bruce would have wanted to know the moment it happened. “Was he here?”

“Not here in Gotham, but I met with him while he was still in Metropolis. He wanted me to pass on a message.”

Bruce has been preparing for this: the worst case scenario in which Clark, now habouring a deep, long-standing hatred of Bruce that even his time beneath the ground and subsequent return to consciousness could not quell, would refuse to join their team on the basis of the fact that one of the founding members nearly succeeded in killing him.

“It’s news to me. What did he want to pass along?”

“I don’t know. I told him I wouldn’t take his messages. If he wants to tell you something, he can speak with you himself.” 

Bruce stares at her. If Clark wanted to make contact with him, he could have done so at any time. What reason would he have for not approaching Bruce directly? “Did he—what did he want?”

Diana shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know. Whatever he has to say, I’m sure he will want to tell you in person. But you need to talk to him, Bruce. Avoiding him isn’t going to make you feel any better.”

“Last time I tried to do that, he nearly threw me out a window. I didn’t feel better after that,” Bruce grouses.

Diana nods understandingly. She’d seen the results of their conversation first-hand, had been the one who initially examined Bruce and encouraged him to seek medical assistance for relatively minor injuries. Of course, his idea of rest and recovery was a trek across Iceland, but he appreciates her efforts.

“I’m sure he didn’t feel better at the time either,” she says gently. “You know yourself, Bruce. You know how it feels to be isolated, and so does he. You can’t build a team and expect it to work if you aren’t willing to play nicely with the others.”

Bruce exhales slowly. He’s returned to picturing a scenario in which Clark has decided to leave Bruce to fight his own battles against alien conquerors, or has perhaps decided to vacate the planet altogether. “He probably just wanted to tell me he wants nothing to do with us.”

“Maybe so, but you won’t know that until you speak to him. And for what it’s worth, I had a lovely conversation with him.” 

When Bruce doesn’t respond, Diana pushes herself out of her chair and stands next to Bruce. “Steppenwolf isn’t going to wait for you to decide. He won’t be expecting a fight and he will fall if we stand together, but there will be no fight if you don’t try to communicate with Clark. There will only be death, and worse.”

Bruce is still staring at the computer monitor, but he’s no longer absorbing anything on-screen. His thoughts have turned to Steppenwolf instead—rather, the great metallic likeness of him that the scout ship had revealed—and it’s easy to picture him crushing each of them into the ground. Diana’s right. Divided, they won’t have any advantage over someone as powerful as Steppenwolf. The Kryptohominid had only fallen when Bruce, Clark, and Diana had combined their strengths to fight back, and they’ll need to do the same to defeat Steppenwolf.

Which means Bruce needs to find Clark and make things right.

The World’s Finest

The new year arrives within a week, and Bruce still hasn’t heard from Clark.

The snow has been falling thick in Gotham, covering up the bed of yellowed leaves and sprills in the forest and clinging to the bare branches of the trees surrounding the lake. In Bruce’s absence, the holiday season had dragged the east coast into true winter, and the last days of December have been busy for Bruce, whose extended vacation has caused somewhat of a headache among curious employees and board members at Wayne Enterprises. It’s nothing that Bruce can’t handle, and in a way, he’s grateful for the radio silence from Clark. It’s markedly easier to face his colleagues than it is to face the man he’d rescued from the brink of death.

It’s mid-afternoon. Bruce is outdoors once more, sweeping a fluffy layer of snow away from the walkway connecting the garage to his house. It’s quiet on the lakeside, which makes Bruce more suspicious when he hears the distant sound of footsteps in the woods.

He turns and rests his arms on the top of his broom, watching curiously as a figure he recognizes immediately as Clark, with his hands stuffed in the pockets of a worn plaid jacket and a few flakes of snow in his hair, steps out from within the treeline near the driveway.

“Hi,” Bruce says.

Clark approaches the house and kicks his boots gently against the stairs, though he avoids tracking snow over the walkway Bruce has just cleared. “Hi.”

He says nothing beyond his simple greeting, and after a moment of sheepish silence Bruce makes his way back to the front door, which he holds open with a tilt of his head. “It’s warmer inside. Come in.”

Bruce stokes the fire in the living room while Clark drapes his jacket over a dining room chair and gets comfortable in the corner of the Charles sofa. He waits politely until Bruce is seated to angle himself to better see both Bruce and the fireplace, then says, “I heard you were out of town. Iceland, right?”

“Yeah, Iceland. Not exactly a tropical destination, but we don’t have hot springs in Gotham.” Bruce tries to keep his expression friendly, polite. It’s strange to have Clark in his home. The last time Clark had been on this property, he’d been—not dead, he knows that now. Maybe not alive, either. Maybe he’d just been quieter.

Clark nods, hums, doesn’t return his smile. “Even on vacation, you found time to send a cheque.”

It didn’t seem fair for Lois to pay out of pocket for a replacement door for her apartment. “Well, I did break the door.”

“And I broke at least three of your ribs,” Clark says.

Bruce closes his eyes. “Clark.”

“Bruce,” Clark counters. He doesn’t raise his voice, and his gaze is fixed calmly on Bruce when Bruce opens his eyes again. “Please, don’t—don’t try to downplay it. I remember what happened.”

“I suppose we didn’t leave things on a very positive note,” Bruce admits. It feels silly to dance around the topic. He can’t tell if Clark’s trying to apologize or not. “I’m not going to hold a grudge against you for what happened.”

Clark frowns faintly and turns his gaze to the logs crackling in the fireplace. “When you left that day, I thought you would… I don’t know. Come back here and make up a story about it. Pretend it never happened and try to cover it up with some story. When I heard you left the country…”

“I didn’t leave because I was afraid, Clark.”

Clark presses his lips together, still staring at the fire with a pensive expression. He takes a deep breath and holds it for a moment. “I had… a dream. It was the end of the world.”

Still staring at the fire, Clark nods, seemingly satisfied that the scene has been set appropriately. “I don’t know how it started. I don’t know how long ago it started. All I know is that it felt like years passed while I was in it, just… trapped in my mind, unable to wake up. I know… well.“ He pauses for a moment, smiling ruefully at Bruce’s fireplace. “I know why I couldn’t wake up, now. But at the time I didn’t know it was a dream. I just thought it was real.

“Before the world ended, there were these invaders, these… aliens, but they weren’t like me. They were bigger, like humans, but… changed. When the world went to hell, they started killing people. Exterminating them, taking out entire cities. They turned the world into a living hell and I can still see it when I close my eyes. Everything I touched, I could feel. The… the smell of smoke, the sound the buildings made when they fell, the dust and dirt and… death. It felt so real.”

Clark’s dream is starting to sound alarmingly familiar. It’s hard to tell whether the outside world could possibly have influenced a dream like this; as far as Bruce knows, most of Clark’s brain had been destroyed, but it’s possible that the few neurons still remaining had been working overtime to fill the darkness in his mind.

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but it did in the dream. After those things took over, there was a resistance. A group of people fighting back. You were there,” he adds, glancing sideways, “only you weren’t hunting criminals anymore. You were killing aliens. And people. You were out of control, and when people tried to stop you, you killed them, too.”

Clark lets out a long sigh.

“I lost Lois in the dream, and… well, you know how dreams go. One minute you’re fighting to save the world alongside the person you love, and the next you’re burning down cities. Crushing innocent people with your bare hands. Swearing to kill the ones who hurt you most. Suddenly you’re the monster.”

He pauses again, obviously affected by this segment of his story. Bruce is no stranger to vivid nightmares, and he’s hardly interested in persuading Clark to explain his, but it’s obvious that Clark has something to say, something that he feels he can only explain by sharing this nightmare. It’s an opportunity for them to open a line of communication, and Bruce isn’t going to shut it down until he’s certain he understands what Clark is trying to tell him.

Patiently, he watches as Clark clears his throat. “You know how hard it is to forget something like that, right? Even in a dream, it just sticks with you. It felt like the world changed, and… I changed too. I wasn’t me, I didn’t feel like me. It felt like I was supposed to be Superman, but the world hated me. You hated me too. And the things I did, the way I treated people… nobody could do anything about it. They feared Superman, but they couldn’t stop me, and anyone who tried…”

Clark curls his hand into a fist and gazes at it for several long seconds. Bruce watches without comment, remembering the phantom weight of Clark’s fingers pressed against his chest, his face twisted in a mask of rage.

“Let me guess,” Bruce says quietly. He remembers chains around his wrists, dust in his lungs, the indescribable sound of men being vivisected by twin beams of heat. “I tried?”

“Yeah,” Clark says. He lets his hand go slack and watches the blood filter back into his palm. “You tried.”

 _She was my world._ Bruce remembers that, too. He thinks he’s starting to understand.

“Back in the apartment… you were protecting Lois,” Bruce says softly. “When you said you remembered what I did, it was because you remembered me as a threat to her.”

“Maybe,” Clark says softly. “I’ve had weeks to think about this and I… honestly, I still don’t know for sure. But what I do know is that it felt like I was there for years. Bruce, I _know_ I spent years there. I don’t know how or why things went so wrong, but I know how powerless I felt. What I did to you and those people, when all of their anger and fear was directed at me… after a while, it just seemed pointless to fight it., so I just stopped trying. I stopped trying to be someone I couldn’t be anymore, and it felt like I was slipping. It went on for so long that I forgot about the people I hurt. You. Lo.

“And then I woke up.” Clark rubs at one eye with the heel of his hand and takes a steadying breath. “I woke up and there she was, and it felt… I mean, I don’t think I have the words to describe it.”

He doesn’t have to. Bruce remembers Clark’s reaction as clearly as he remembers his back hitting the wall, as clearly as he remembers Clark’s fingers grasping his heart. 

It’s a damn good thing Lois was there to talk him down.

“You know I’m not angry with you,” Bruce says finally. “After what happened…”

At last, Clark smiles a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I know. Lo told me what happened, and I’ll get to that. It’s just—I spent so long associating you with someone else. I nearly killed you for it.”

It’s not exactly an apology, but Bruce wouldn’t accept one if he offered it. “Guess it makes us even.”

“No, we—we’re not even,” Clark says. His sudden indignance takes Bruce by surprise. “Are you talking about what happened before? In Gotham? This isn’t about that, it’s not… I thought I was gone, Bruce. I spent so long watching innocent people die. I tore people apart with my own hands, I—I killed you,” he says, his voice dropping a level, a secret shared between them. “Maybe it was only a dream, but if I’d been in there for any longer, I might not have been able to stop myself from doing it in real life.”

Knowing that he’d come closer to death in that apartment than he’d previously thought—and not for the reasons he’d expected—is a strangely humbling revelation. Clark hadn’t spared him because he wanted Bruce to ruminate on what he’d done, to remind him of how close he’d come to making so grave a mistake that night in Gotham. He’d spared him because, even after being locked inside a version of himself who had embraced the hatred and anger, he was still good. Good enough to spare the man who had nearly taken his life, and good enough to come to him, not seeking forgiveness, but to offer insight.

Plato could never have predicted this.

Clark shifts a little, fidgeting with his hands, the cuff of his shirt. “Anyway, that’s… I wanted to tell you in person. I know it doesn’t excuse what I did, and after what you did for me…”

 _To_ you, Bruce thinks.

“I’m glad I was there,” he says. “Broken door aside. I’m glad I was there when you woke up.”

Clark looks at him, his forehead slightly wrinkled as he takes in Bruce’s expression, but Bruce isn’t concerned about getting a response from him. He’s a reporter. Handling the truth should be easy.

•

Catching Clark up on current events is a brief and painless process. Lois had, as expected, explained to Clark how the world had gone on without him, how despair had taken the place of hope and how emboldened the hateful have become. Even with only a passing knowledge of Steppenwolf, meta-humans, and the plan to take a stand against an alien army, Clark seems to understand how busy Bruce has actually been in the past year. Bruce simply assumes that by now Clark knows about Luthor’s scheme. It would only be natural for Lois to relay that information to him, too; after all, she’d been the one to expose his plan.

“I should have known that this would be his fault, too,” Clark admits. He has a glass of water in his hands, yet he’s hardly taken a sip of it since Bruce offered it to him. “People like him… slimy, sadistic men, masquerading as philanthropists when they only serve their own interests… they’re never satisfied with the damage they cause. There’s always something bigger, some other motivation… some new way to make people suffer.”

Bruce chuckles quietly at Clark’s unexpected vehemence. He has a glass in his hands, too, half-full with wine, but it’s there simply to sit in his hands and grow tepid in the fire-warmed air. “The world would be a better place if people like Luthor always got what they deserved. So far, we’re the only ones who know that he contacted Steppenwolf, but if word gets out that he invited an invasion…”

Clark nods slowly. “I brought an invasion, too. But I guess I got what I deserved.”

Bruce is filled momentarily with a sensation adjacent to panic. Could he still think Bruce despises him, even knowing that Bruce is the reason he’s here? “Clark, I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” Clark says archly. “You meant people who are self-serving. Egotistical. People with a warped sense of justice, convinced they’re doing the right thing no matter what they have to do or who gets hurt in the process.”

He raises an eyebrow at Bruce who, with a carefully neutral expression concealing his immense disappointment, considers taking a mouthful of the wine warming between his hands.

“Of course.” 

Clark taps the rim of his glass with a quiet sigh, face softening as it becomes apparent that Bruce isn’t going to defend himself. “Bruce, I didn’t come here to add insult to injury. I know you’re not like Luthor. I can’t ignore what happened, but if what Lois told me was true, and you went through all of that trouble to get me here… I don’t want to hold what happened against you. I mean, eye for an eye, I did more damage to you in the apartment than you did to me with that spear, so...”

He pauses to take a sip of water. “If we’re being honest here, I know you’ve done far for me than I could ever dream of doing for you. But I feel like I’m just talking at you, so maybe…”

There’s a hint of a smile on his face now. It’s barely there, but it’s genuine, the sort of easy expression that Bruce recognizes from the photographs in Lois’s apartment, and it’s so unexpected that Bruce simply blinks at him. 

He wants the truth? The truth is all around them: on Bruce’s computer, hidden in a file full of photographs of a body on a table; in a drawer containing empty petri dishes and vials with Clark’s name printed on each label; in the glass case where Bruce’s shame has become a shrine, filled with reminders of the dead. The truth is that what he’d actually done to Clark would be enough to kill any other person several times over. Clark could have walked away from his fight with that monster with only a few broken bones and a concussion and lived to tell the tale. A cut from a spear wouldn’t have killed Bruce, of course, but for Clark to fill Bruce’s lungs with gas, to irradiate him and burn him from the inside out? It would kill Bruce.

And maybe Bruce would deserve it.

“I don’t expect a pat on the back for helping you,” Bruce says at last. “I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

It seems strange that he isn’t sure what to say, now that Clark is directly in front of him and waiting for him to participate in conversation. Despite all the time he’s spent planning out Clark’s return and preparing for Clark to reject his invitation to join the team, he seems to have forgotten to plan for actually speaking with Clark.

Seeming to take pity on him, Clark clears his throat and sets his glass aside. “Well, I guess you’re probably used to being able to do things without people knowing you did it. How long have you been back, anyway? I was here before Christmas and Alfred said that he didn’t know when you’d return, so I thought Lo would tell me if you came looking, but she said you never came back.”

In truth, Bruce hadn’t wanted to go looking for him. Immediately following his return from Iceland, all that Bruce cared about was turning on the television to find breaking stories about Superman’s return. All he’d found on the local news was a brief segment about the missing Batman—“the masked vigilante is a no-show,” the reporter had said, as if this is the first time Batman has disappeared for a few days—but in the wake of the election, celebrities are all the news stations seem to care about, Superman not included.

“I thought you’d prefer the privacy.”

Clark’s watching him with his head slightly tilted. “So you... didn’t know I was in Kansas?” he asks slowly, forehead wrinkling with uncertainty. “I told... Diana? She told me she’d pass the message along.”

Bruce will need to have a discussion with Diana about what happens when people on a team don’t communicate.

“I must have missed the note. Did you decide to move back?”

Clark chuckles. “No, no, I’m still staying with Lo across the bay.” The small curve of his lips has turned into a full-blown grin, and it’s clear he’s got something to say. 

His smile is so infectious that Bruce begins to smile too. He knows what's coming. “So you didn’t move to Kansas, but…?”

“Well, I didn’t move back in. But my mom did,” he says.

•

It’s nearly forty-five minutes later when Clark, shrugging on his jacket by the door, asks: “So, when can I meet the rest of them?”

“Soon,” Bruce says. “I think we’re running out of time. We need to come up with a plan. If we can keep the mother box hidden, keep taking those scouts down as they come so that Steppenwolf comes in blind…” He clears his throat, gives Clark a brief smile. “But we can focus on introducing everyone first.”

“Sure,” Clark says easily. “I, uh, I don’t have a phone right now, but if you need to send the details my way, I’ll catch wind of it.” 

With a nod of acknowledgement, Bruce opens the door for him and they step outside together; the snowfall hasn’t let up over the course of Clark’s visit, and while the roof overhang has kept most of the snow contained to the ground and away from the deck, there’s a new layer of snow on the walkway leading to the garage that Bruce will need to sweep away before Alfred returns.

“I guess I’ll see you around,” Clark says. He shoves his hands in his pockets once more and steps out into the fresh snow, leaving a trail of perfect prints as he makes his way to the edge of the woods. 

Bruce stands beneath the overhang and watches the snowflakes land on his shoulders, in his hair.

“Clark,” he calls. “Was it snowing in Kansas? When you left?”

The question seems to take Clark by surprise. He turns back toward Bruce, his brow furrowed in thought. There’s no hole in his chest, and the only thing steaming is his breath in the cool winter air.

“Uh… yeah, a little. We don’t get storms like the ones here on the coast, but we get some.” He eyes the broom in Bruce’s hand, then glances at the walkway Bruce had been sweeping when he’d first arrived. About an inch and a half has fallen since Clark’s arrival; most of the land around the house has been covered, driveway and forest floor included, but the lake remains open, unfrozen despite the chill. “It’s funny. Most people in Kansas just shovel their driveway, but when I moved to Metropolis I found out people in the city use leaf blowers.”

He makes a face that suggests he’s never seen anything more alien in his life. “Well, no leaf blowers out here. Just manual work. The snow covers up the dead grass and leaves. Makes it look clean until it melts in the spring. I kind of think it’s an improvement.”

Clark glances at the snow around him, and after a moment his face cracks into another polite smile. “Yeah, it kind of is.”

•

In the cave, Bruce opens his file on Clark and deletes the folder of post-mortem photographs.

●

Within the week, the hangar has become an unofficial temporary headquarters, and while not especially pleasing to the eye, it’s a practical space for a group of meta-humans to gather and plan an assault on an alien invader who hasn’t yet arrived.

Diana has security bypass down to a science by now—not that she needs it, being the only person who returns to Bruce’s property as frequently as Alfred and himself—and she thanks Alfred for the plate of cheese, meat, and grapes he’d brought while they wait for the rest to show; Barry sneaks inside without registering on any of Bruce’s extremely expensive security systems, arriving in a brilliant display of electrical energy that makes Bruce question whether his security was even worth it; Victor signals his arrival by disabling the monitoring system completely, which doesn’t make Bruce’s security investment feel like such a failure, but his concerns about privacy and failing security systems all disappear when the hangar door opens a final time.

All heads swing toward the doorway as Clark calls, “Sorry, traffic was bad. Am I late?”

“No, we’re just getting—”

“Oh my god,” Barry says suddenly, staring wide-eyed at Clark. Bruce glances sideways at him, expecting an ill-timed Frankenstein reference, when in a hushed whisper Barry says, “I think we have the same jacket.”

•

Clark and Diana are the last to leave when the first official team meeting concludes. Diana has already thoroughly explored the hangar, but with Bruce’s permission he wanders through the open space, examining the Fox from all sides while Bruce and Diana make a few final preparations. It’s one of the only vehicles Bruce has that a Kryptonian hasn’t torn to shreds, and it’s a hell of a lot larger than most of his other toys.

“I guess the world really is different now,” Clark says eventually, once he’s made his way back around to the computer that Bruce and Diana are huddled around. “Luthor really made a mess with the ship, didn’t he?”

Before Bruce can confirm that Luthor did indeed create a few major problems, Diana says, Steppenwolf’s invasion may have been catalyzed by Lex Luthor, but it was always inevitable that he would return for the mother boxes.”

Clark leans his hip against a nearby table, arms crossed as he glances down at the screen. “And the team of… meta-humans? Was that inevitable?”

“It was Bruce’s idea,” Diana replies lightly. “He should be able to answer that question.”

Bruce clears his throat. “We were helpless during the Kryptonian invasion. The military couldn’t touch that terraforming ship until yours was brought in,” he says, glancing at Clark. “And even if we had managed to take down General Zod the first time, he was almost too powerful for even us. You won’t hear this in the news, but the U.S. lost a few military bases and half of a major city in a meta-human incident last year, and that was without the help of an alien army. The government is on the hunt for people like us. Metas are being catalogued and locked up by people like Luthor and Waller, who seem to be convinced that if they aren’t fighting for the government, they’re fighting against it.”

Clark absorbs the news with a faint frown. Obviously Lois hasn’t gotten around to telling him about this particular atrocity. “What do you mean by catalogued?”

Bruce pushes himself up from the computer and, after a moment of digging around in a nearby toolbox, procures the _Meta-Human Assets_ document and hands it to Clark. “Victor’s not in it, luckily, but Barry is. Waller has most of the people in that book under her thumb, so I tried to bring together the rest.”

“Some weren’t so eager to join,” Diana adds. “But we’re thankful for the ones who did. This team, it isn’t an army. It’s a safe haven for people who are different… people who thought they were alone.”

Clark flips through the document slowly. “Does Barry know he’s in this?”

“More or less,” Bruce says. Diana coughs politely.

“And you said there were people who didn’t want to join?”

“Yeah. Arthur Curry, the Aquaman.” 

Clark flips through a few more pages, scanning each one for a name. “He’s a big guy. Pretty hard to ignore. Unfortunately, we have no way of tracking someone capable of living at the bottom of the ocean.”

“For what it’s worth, I think he’ll show up again,” Diana says. She’s ready to leave, a scarf wrapped around her neck, a fashionable coat buttoned up to protect against the cold. “If everything goes according to plan, that is.”

Clark studies Arthur’s page, then gives a quiet ‘huh’ before closing it and placing it back on the desk.

“Are you leaving?”

“I’m sure we’ll be in touch,” Diana tells him. “Clark. It was nice to see you again.”

“Nice to see you too,” Clark replies. They shake hands in the corner of Bruce’s eye and then Diana is on her way, leaving Bruce and Clark alone at last in the hangar. 

When the doors finally close, Bruce shuts off the computer monitor and sits up straight in his chair, grimacing as the joints in his spine pop.

“Good meeting,” he says, swiveling to face Clark. “Thanks for coming, by the way. I know they were eager to say hello.”

Clark scuffs a boot against the floor. “Figured I should meet everyone at least once if we’re gonna do this thing,” he says. He takes a breath and looks up at the ceiling, letting his gaze fall slowly over the Fox. “But I should probably get going. I have some…”

His voice trails off. Bruce isn’t sure if he’s reluctant to say what business he has, or if he’s just bad at making excuses. If it’s the latter, it’s a little endearing. Surely he must know that Bruce is aware he no longer has a day job to keep himself occupied. “Yeah, don’t worry about it. Go get some rest. We’ll regroup once Victor has the mother box and go from there.”

Clark nods, but doesn’t make any move to leave as Bruce stands from his chair and reaches for the A.R.G.U.S. document.

“One more thing,” Clark says.

Bruce turns away from him to put the document back in its drawer. “Go ahead.”

He hears Clark take another breath, then a long, controlled exhale. “Ma said… before the funeral, someone tried to give her a case with my suit in it. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“I thought she might want to keep it,” Bruce says.

Clark hums, and when Bruce turns around he’s still staring up at the Fox. “Yeah. I guess what I’m trying to say is... I can’t avoid putting it on if aliens start invading. People are gonna ask questions, but I can’t fight in street clothes.”

Bruce smiles a little. “No, you can’t.”

He’s been dreading this moment. He doesn’t know if Clark will be upset; it would make sense to remove the armour and dress Clark in normal clothing for a funeral. It wouldn’t be that unusual to keep the suit.

Enshrining it, however...

Clark turns back to him. “So… do you think I could get it back from you?”

There’s no logical reason for him to keep it. Bruce doesn’t have anything to hide, and it’s not as if he has anything to lose by giving it back.

He rests a hand on Clark’s shoulder, squeezing briefly as he steps past. “Let me show you something.”

•

When the first suit had been mounted in the armoury, it had taken months of using the staircase that winds around the glass display before it became part of the scenery. It’s not that the suit doesn’t draw his attention now; the suits within create a natural centerpiece and happen to be located in a section of the cave that Bruce simply can’t avoid. Being the most brightly coloured, the Kryptonian armour draws the eye, serving as a solemn reminder of past mistakes, like the defaced suit it had joined.

Had Bruce not forgotten what he meant by hanging that first suit in his cave, he wouldn’t be in this situation. Had he not forgotten his way, not forgotten his promises, the past few years wouldn’t have cost him so dearly—so for over a year Superman’s suit and the kryptonite spear have watched over Bruce night and day, next to the helmet from his decommissioned mech suit, next to Robin. In the time since, Bruce hasn’t forgotten the promise he’d made Clark a year ago: a promise to do better, to _be_ better, to never lose sight of hope.

Now, with Clark gazing up at the suit, Bruce’s gaze is fixed on Clark. This time, his promise has been kept.

“It didn’t seem right to bury you in it,” he says. Bruce normally prefers silence, but Clark hasn’t spoken since entering the room. It’s becoming unbearable. “I didn’t know how to remove it. This seemed like the best way to do it.”

Clark exhales slowly. 

They’re on the ground floor, a safe distance from the kryptonite spear. Clark doesn’t seem affected by the radiation, and the cave lighting is sufficient enough to keep the kryptonite’s glow from colouring Clark’s face. “Did you cut it open with that?”

“With kryptonite? Yes. I didn’t use the spear.” Bruce says. The blade had sliced so cleanly through it. No frayed edges, no jagged cuts.

Without turning his gaze from the display, Clark says, “You have more.”

“Yes.” Bruce remembers Clark’s call for honesty in their conversation above ground. Clark deserves the same courtesy here, even in the sanctuary of the batcave. “Fragments. Enough to be lethal.”

Clark turns to him. His eyes are the same blue-brown as they had been under this lighting before, but if Bruce were to touch Clark’s face, he knows that it would be warm. Even the earliest hunters knew that warmth meant life.

“Lo told me you were the one who helped my family. She said… the coffin, the gravestone, the funeral… the entire house… nobody else could have done that for us. Nobody else would have.”

Bruce doesn’t need to say yes to confirm that for Clark. The certainty is written in his features.

“And this plan. You spent months tracking down these people who never wanted to be found… carrying on with the plan even when people refused to join… breaking into a ship from my planet, and… doing what you did to bring me back. You’re preparing for an invasion.” 

Clark tilts his head, and for the first time Bruce feels as if Clark is looking through him, searching for something that Bruce has hidden inside himself. Journalist, Kryptonian—they know how to look for the truth. They know how to get it. “That’s a big one-eighty, Bruce. And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate it, all of it. Like I said, I—I couldn’t do the same for you. I can’t repay all of this.”

“You don’t have to, Clark,” Bruce assures him. “This isn’t an exchange. It’s not about favours.”

Clark scoffs quietly, turning his gaze back to the glass display. This time, he looks down at the small pedestal holding the ruined metal cowl. “We were never friends. We barely knew each other. What did you see in me that inspired all of this?”

A loaded question. Along with her research into Bruce’s spending habits, Lois must’ve shared her theory that Bruce has been personally driven by Clark to do the things he’s done. It’s not that she’s wrong, but Bruce would prefer it if Clark were still under the impression that Bruce is just trying to do the right thing.

If she knew as much of Bruce’s M.O. as she claimed—and if the wear and tear on her copy of _The Republic_ is any indication of her familiarity with the topic of justice—it shouldn’t be hard to believe. It’s obvious that Clark was never an enemy, and to injure him was a grievous error, but to suggest that Bruce is repaying or even creating a debt is simply incorrect. _A friend ought always to do good to a friend. Paying your debts is not a correct definition of justice_. 

“I saw a good man,” Bruce says. “One who sacrificed himself without thought. One who deserved far better than what the world could give him. One who deserved to live.”

Over the past year, Bruce has had a lot of time to think about what he would say to Clark in this moment, and yet he feels utterly unprepared for it. No matter what he tells Clark now, he knows is that nothing is worth saying if Clark doesn’t understand that Bruce would do anything to bring him back.

Clark gazes at him for a long moment, then begins to unzip his coat. “I appreciate that. But…” 

He reaches for the collar of his shirt and tugs it down, revealing a thin black line spanning the length of his collarbone.

Volcanic rock under a perfect sheet of snow, the smell of burnt flesh and sulphur, ash between Bruce’s fingers.

“You saw something _in_ me, Bruce.” Clark says quietly. “I don’t care how you found it. I just want to know what you found.”

•

He’d expected Clark to blame him. Welcomed it, in fact.

It had been Bruce’s fault from the beginning, and he’s managed to prove it methodically, scientifically. He’d hypothesized, he’d experimented, and he’d reached his conclusion. Kryptonite isn’t fatal to humans. The method by which it ionizes molecules does not appear to have any effect on people, and too little research exists to suggest that it would be harmful even with prolonged exposure.

Kryptonians are not so impervious. The radiation compromises cell membrane integrity, denatures proteins, deletes entire segments of DNA. Clark’s lungs would have been irreparably damaged with repeated exposure to the kryptonite gas. Had Clark survived for any length of time, the mineral would have remained in his alveoli, would have caused radiation sickness, would have induced cellular apoptosis. The radiation from the kryptonite in his lungs would have killed him slowly, had it been given the chance, but the Kryptonian monster had struck first. Clark’s weakened cells had become susceptible to the monster’s electric discharge. Bruce had proven it.

It’s his fault, and yet Clark doesn’t blame him.

“You shouldn’t think of it as an invasion of privacy. It doesn’t sound disrespectful at all,” Clark says, referring to the way Bruce had arranged him on a table, cleaned his body, prepared him for burial. “A full autopsy is the least disrespectful thing you could have done. If you hadn’t followed your instincts, you wouldn’t have known what you know now.”

“I took samples,” Bruce argues.

“And they gave you the pieces you needed to put the puzzle together. The ship, the samples, even the kryptonite. You’re not a monster for wanting to be sure,” Clark says. “You’re not a monster, and you didn’t make me one, either.

“But there’s one thing I don’t get,” he says moments later, pulling Bruce out of his thoughts once more. “The Registry of Citizens. If all of that DNA isn’t in me, where is it now?”

“I stored it in the ship,” Bruce replies. “Victor and I made sure that S.T.A.R. Labs won’t find it. Only someone with a specific genetic code will be able to access it, should they find themselves looking for it.”

Realization dawns on Clark’s face. “You made it so that only a Kryptonian can access it.”

“ _One_ Kryptonian can access it,” Bruce says. “I had to make sure those samples were good for something.”

Clark’s eyebrows raise, though his expression suggests that he’s more impressed than he is repulsed. It might take some time for him to discover that the entire Kryptonian scout ship is now attuned to Clark's DNA, but it only seems appropriate for the ship to follow the command of the last remaining Kryptonian.

•

“Are you sure they’ll be able to find it?”

It’s taken nearly two hours for Bruce to fully explain the source of his guilt, though he’s used numerous words to avoid that particular sentiment. He knows that’s what it is, and he knows from past experience that it will take more time yet to work through on his own. Bruce has grown attached to the idea that Clark would despise him for what he’d done, and he’s always been exceptionally terrible at letting go of things.

“If it’s there, they’ll find it.” Bruce glances at his phone. Victor hasn’t contacted him in just over a minute. He would expect a text from Barry, but it takes Barry longer to respond to a text than it does for him to appear in burst of lightning and respond in person. “Just give them time.”

Clark nods, watching from Bruce’s ergonomic computer chair. “I imagine you guys know that ship better than I do.” 

It’s still strange enough to see him back in this room; instead of his cape, a red plaid jacket is draped over one of Bruce’s tables, and his voice is more interesting to listen to than the hum of equipment and the rush of water.

“I didn’t actually get to explore it. Victor’s spent a lot of time in it, though. I think he’s made an interesting connection with it.” Bruce’s phone buzzes with an alert, cutting off his stream of thought. 

_Found what you’re looking for. Black or blue?_

A photograph appears on the screen: two Kryptonian suits of armour identical to Clark’s original outfit, each in its own separate pod set into the walls of the ship. The familiar red-and-gold crest is a relief to see, but the second suit catches Bruce’s eye.

He glances up at Clark, glances down at his phone, and says—

**II**

Steppenwolf comes not for the mother box, but for Victor.

The human mother box should be the easiest to obtain, guarded by only scientists with no means to defend themselves against swarms of parademons and a seven-foot alien conqueror. But, as expected, Steppenwolf and his parademons arrive blind, and immediately hone in on the scent of an Apokoliptian tech with a much larger footprint—the body of Victor Stone. 

Steppenwolf makes his entrance on a secluded shore in Rauðasandur, with the Greenland sea stretching across the horizon to the west and the steep Látrabjarg sea cliffs like a vast eastern wall, the mother box remains safe and sound and completely undetected in Gotham.

When he finally arrives, cratering the soft red sand and bringing with him an army of his buzzing, nightmarish insects, they’re ready for him.

•

As it turns out, fighting on a beach works out perfectly.

Because of the dangerous trek required to access the beach, tourist activity is all but non-existent, and the nearest town is distant enough that drawing Steppenwolf and his minions out into the open will pose no threat. The cliffs act as an excellent vantage point for Bruce, allowing him to grapple to safety and dive bomb into the fray at his leisure and providing him with a bird’s eye view of the ocean; Barry, who moves so quickly over the sand and surf that Bruce is fairly sure he isn’t even touching it, zips through the swarm in a whirlwind of lightning and dashes parademons against the rocky cliffside at speeds Bruce can barely comprehend, sending the resident puffins squawking in all directions; Victor and Clark fight from the sky, visible as blurs of silver and red and blue that blast Steppenwolf and his parademons with sonic cannons and heat vision, while Diana—who is surprisingly sure-footed on the sand, fighting with the same martial mastery that Bruce had watched her demonstrate in Gotham—keeps him busy from the ground with her sword and shield.

The tide of battle begins to turn when Clark, grappling with a parademon, plunges suddenly out of the air and into the ocean. Bruce is on the beach fighting back-to-back with Diana when it happens, though he’s too slow to intervene; when he whirls around to scan the water Clark bursts through the surface, inhales, and expels an explosive spray of frigid air that freezes the surrounding water almost instantaneously. 

“Clark,” Bruce calls, ducking out of the way of a parademon that Diana has just run through with her sword and thrown over his head. He’s about to throw himself back into the action when he sees something that gives him pause—another armoured figure rising from the ocean’s depths, water dripping from his long hair as he stands on the now-solid ice sheet next to Clark.

“Hey, you ugly sack of shit, you picked the wrong fuckin’ beach!” 

As Steppenwolf turns and the parademons converge on the island of ice, Arthur Curry breaks off a long, thin icicle that had flash-frozen in Clark’s ascent, hoists it like a spear, and sends it hurtling through the air.

•

When the battle is done, Bruce trudges into the surf to face the Aquaman.

It looks like half the beach is stained with the green ooze of dead parademons; the puffins are only now beginning to return to their cliffside nests, and the surf is beginning to wash away the remnants of the battle, smoothing the sand with soft waves and carrying the green waste out to sea. Arthur kicks at the gore-splattered sand, nudging it closer to the surf, but his revulsed expression dissolves when he catches sight of Bruce.

“Better late than never,” he says lightly. His modulator doesn’t allow for changes in tone. He probably sounds like an asshole.

Arthur shows his teeth. It could be a grin, but it could be a warning for Bruce to take several steps back. “What, you think I came all the way here for you? Hell no. I’m here for this guy.”

“This guy.” Bruce repeats. He glances back at the shore. Victor and Barry are examining the mother box, and Diana is rinsing her sword in the water. No friends in sight. “‘This guy’ meaning… yourself?”

He keeps looking, just in case there’s something on the beach he’s missed. Clark is, inexplicably, no longer in sight—until Bruce turns his head and finds him floating next to Arthur, descending from the sky until he touches down gently in the shallow water. “Did I miss something?”

Arthur holds out a hand, and to Bruce’s surprise, Clark grasps it in his own. Their handshake is brief and it looks powerful enough to crush every bone in Bruce’s body.

“We go way back,” Arthur explains confidently, planting his newfound weapon—a deadly-looking five-pronged spear (quindent?) that he’s been using to expertly skewer parademons in mid-air—in the sand. “I found this sad sack drowning in my ocean a few years ago.”

“I wasn’t drowning, you just wanted a reason to feel like a hero,” Clark corrects. He looks Arthur over, taking in the intricately-carved suit of armour that now covers him from head to toe. “I didn’t realize you were making a name for yourself.”

“I didn’t realize you were working with this weird sonofabitch.” Arthur tilts the quindent in Bruce’s direction, but his attention is quickly drawn away from Bruce and toward the sky as a shadow passes overhead. “What the fuck is that?”

Clark chuckles and follows Arthur’s gaze. The Flying Fox has already started to descend, sending small waves rippling away as it prepares to land in the shallows a few hundred feet away. “I think that’s our ride home.”

He walks off without further comment. Arthur stares at the ship, watching as the ramp slowly begins to lower into the sand. In the distance, Victor and Barry begin moving toward it. “Is this the, uh, team you were talking about?”

“Yeah, this is it.”

“I think we have a few free slots, if you’d still like to give it a try,” Clark says from several feet ahead of them. “Right, Bruce?”

The team is already beginning to board the Fox. Victor follows, then Diana, Barry, and Clark. At the base of the ramp, Bruce turns back to Arthur and tilts his head in the direction of the aircraft’s interior. Arthur seems hesitant, his gaze flitting back and forth between Bruce and the rest of the people inside the carrier.

“If I do this thing, am I gonna regret it?” 

He’s asking Clark, who has turned around to watch him make his decision. Clark glances back at Diana, Barry, and Victor, and shrugs. “I don’t.” He catches Bruce’s eye for just a second, long enough to share a small, private smile before he turns away and steps inside. 

“Yeah, well, no promises,” Arthur says. He takes a tentative step up the ramp, following in Superman’s footsteps and walking side-by-side with Bruce as they join the rest of the team inside.

●

When spring arrives in Gotham, sending the last of the snow on its way with a few weeks of warm weather and occasional light rains, it brings the birds and squirrels and other fauna back into the forest around the lake. It also brings Clark to the lake, on a night when the moon is new and the stars are bright in the sky, and he arrives with a twelve-pack of beer and a surprisingly sunny disposition.

It’s been a quiet evening for Bruce until now. The day had been bright and warm, and even past sunset the air is cooling slowly enough that, with Clark’s company, he can justify dragging a couple of lounge chairs out of storage to put on the deck facing the lake.

Clark sets the case on the ground between their chairs and reaches inside. Bruce notes that it’s already open, and he can’t help but picture Clark in his Kryptonian regalia, floating aimlessly among the clouds with a can of beer in his hand. “You want one?”

Bruce chuckles and lowers himself into his own chair. It’s nice to have the option to sit outdoors at night, rather than holing himself up in the cave for hours. He’s ready for a change in season.

“Suit yourself,” Clark says, reaching into the depths of the case. “But I do have something you might like.” He fishes around in the case, which must be emptier than it looks, and after a moment he procures a book and offers it to Bruce.

It’s certainly not what Bruce was expecting to see in a case of Budweiser, but he takes it anyway, thumbing over the worn, familiar cover with a sound of quiet surprise.

“Did you steal this from Lois?”

Clark snorts, repositioning himself in his seat and reaching into the case once more. This time he pulls out a can of beer, which reassures Bruce that he isn’t simply carrying around an empty case full of reading material. “Seriously? I have hobbies. Anyway, I saw there was a page marked, and Lo said you’d been reading it that night, so… I figured you’d already read it,” he adds sheepishly, “but I thought you might like to pick up where you left off.”

Bruce smiles a little and places the book carefully on the deck next to his chair. “Thank you, Clark.” He glances sideways, watching as Clark pops open the tab on his can. “So… is there something on your mind?”

Clark shrugs lazily. “Not really. Just needed to get out for a while, I guess. Most of the people I know still think I’m dead.”

It’s been a couple of months since Superman’s reintroduction to the world. Between the religious fanatics, the conspiracy theorists, the news and social media outlets, and anti-alien protests, Clark has been understandably eager to remain out of the public eye, and explaining the reappearance of a dead man is still a tricky situation that he hasn’t yet figured out. He still dresses like Clark Kent—in plaid, which Bruce has determined is a style he genuinely prefers and not simply a disguise, but he hasn’t once put on a pair of glasses since his return.

“At least you have Lois,” Bruce offers. He hasn’t spoken with her since the morning of Clark’s return. No news must be good news. “It must be some comfort to—”

“Wait, hold that thought.” Clark holds up a finger to cut Bruce off, then reaches once more into the case of beer. He pulls out a small envelope this time, holding it out for Bruce to inspect. “She wanted me to give you this. It’s a thank-you note for the door,” he says.

Bruce opens the envelope carefully. The card is plain, with only a Thank You written in elegant script on the front. It’s too dark for Bruce to clearly read the full message, but he reads what he can of the handwritten note inside and closes the card with a faint smile.

“You’re lucky to have someone like Lois. Have you thought about the wedding, now that you’ve been back a while?”

Clark tips his head back and gazes up at the sky. “Mm. Actually, we’re… no longer engaged.”

Bruce thumbs over the card’s edge. Lois had still been wearing her engagement ring that day, and Clark has seemed happy to have her by his side. They’re still living together, though Bruce wonders now if it’s only a living arrangement of convenience. Perhaps the reason he’s here is “I’m sorry to hear that, Clark.”

Clark takes a sip from his can and sighs. “No, it’s fine. Really. She’s still my best friend, and we like living together. It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s just been… a weird couple of months for both of us.”

“I’m glad you’re still on good terms,” Bruce says truthfully. “When half your day is spent in a cape, it helps to have someone you can be yourself around. I’m lucky to have Alfred. I’m sure the others have someone they can talk to.”

“And now we have each other,” Clark says, nodding sagely. 

Bruce chuckles. “Yeah. It may feel strange for a while.”

“It’s just weird having a full team of people who… address me by name. I’m used to Lo and Ma knowing, but...” Clark pauses, gazing thoughtfully at the lake. “I guess the only other thing is the scar. I don’t have many of those.”

Bruce hasn’t seen the full scar on Clark’s torso, but he doesn’t have to see it to know what it looks like. He’d created it, after all. It seems strange that this mark should stay when the cheek Bruce had cut with the spear is smooth and untouched. Even the monster that had impaled Clark hadn’t left so much as a scratch on him, once the ship had finished putting him back together, but for reasons neither he nor Clark understand, the Y-shape of the autopsy incision still stands out on Clark’s skin; like the suit, it no longer serves as a reminder of his failure, but of their success in spite of it.

“I think you’ll see how overrated they are soon enough,” Bruce says, quietly amused. “They’re hard to ignore at first. Unpleasant to deal with. But you get used to them, and they heal. And then you’re just stuck with it.” It’s possible that, like the wound he’d left on Clark’s face, the post-mortem scar will fade too, becoming nothing but a distant memory.

It takes a moment for him to realize he’s still staring at Clark’s face. It hasn’t escaped Clark’s notice, either; he’s gazing back at Bruce, obviously curious, and at this point Bruce can see no alternative but to maintain eye contact until someone breaks away.

“Sounds terrible,” Clark says, a hint of a playful smile starting to tug at his lips. “Being stuck with something that’s unpleasant to deal with, I mean.” 

He abandons the impromptu staring contest to take another sip of his beer, and eventually returns his gaze to the sky. _The eyes are designed to look up at the stars_ , Bruce remembers, but he doesn’t look away from Clark. 

He remembers reading the book on that morning. _No man would keep his hands off of what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked_ —but it would not be unjust to touch Clark now, to reach out and feel the scars on his chest, to touch him as the Clark-shaped monster had touched him in the dream. He knows it wasn’t Clark at all, the man who’d taken Bruce’s heart as vengeance, and yet he’s never quite managed to forget it. He’d gone on to slide his hand between Clark’s ribs and grasp his heart in return, holding it until it crumbled under his fingers, but he could touch Clark’s chest now and feel a new heartbeat—one that has never risen in fear at the thought of Bruce with kryptonite in his hands and hatred in his eyes, one not touched by Bruce, but crafted by him in the quiet depths of the Genesis Chamber.

“Maybe,” Bruce says softly. “But some things are worth getting used to.”

**Author's Note:**

> With that said, I'd like to throw a few big 'thank you's out: first, to stuvyx, whose fantastic art, enthusiasm, and Frankenstein references made this whole thing possible; to my three wonderful friends and betas: [jew-gi-oh](http://jew-gi-oh.tumblr.com/), Ashley, and a special volunteer known only as the Tentacle Throne, all of whom have given me such valuable feedback and tolerated all of my yelling; and to the mods and other SRB participants, _especially_ the Discord crew, who made this event so enjoyable!
> 
>  
> 
> Now, the bonus features:
> 
> **A)** The concept of the League as a safe haven was inspired in part by two quotes: Joseph Campbell's "where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world", and Mary Shelley's "we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another", i.e. the Kryptonian script on Clark's suit and stuvyx's original art prompt title, respectively. That said, I think the premise of this fic justified the _Frankenstein_ references, and it was just a pleasant coincidence that Luthor created a monster of his own that created lightning storms at the beginning and end of its (new) life.  
>  **B)** The names suggested by the Kryptonian ship were all from various DC canons: Feln was an ancient member of the house of El (before it _was_ the house of El, only a few generations before the first Kal-El), along with Wedna Kil-Gor. Lor-Em and Nam-Ek both made appearances in Man of Steel.  
>  **C)** I've never read a single word of Plato in my life until now, which I think is blatantly obvious. Lines may or may not have been taken wildly out of context. Sorry, Plato.  
>  **D)** How many references to unused JL trailer shots/dialogue/reportedly deleted character arcs can one fit into a story? I made it my goal to find out. I especially loved the rumours that the other members of the League would have experienced their own Knightmare counterparts' memories from that world, so it felt natural that Clark would react strongly to those events. On that note, I certainly couldn't forget about the Codex's rumoured hand in Clark's return, so I knew that genetic experimentation was always going to be a point of interest in a fic like this.  
>  **E)** Ionizing radiation does in fact increase electrical conductivity in some materials. The concept of alien radiation that only affects Kryptonians has always been interesting to me, and seeing as Clark did have a rather [unpleasant scorch mark](https://78.media.tumblr.com/9db263e7af6162f0476b47a7946a9d3e/tumblr_p82g3okjkn1qb857so1_r1_1280.png) around his chest in BvS, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.  
>  **F)** I would be doing everyone who is still reading this a disservice by not including a special book recommendation. If you can handle cadaver talk and appreciate a bit of humour with your corpses, [ I highly recommend reading](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53ece1c6e4b01bcecac611f1/t/553aaf5fe4b0b45c076baf2c/1429909343678/Roach%252C+Mary+-+Stiff%252C+The+Curious+Life+Of+Human+Cadavers+%281%29.pdf) Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, which explores the many historical and modern uses of bodies that have been donated (or not) to science ~~and which I only discovered three days ago~~.


End file.
